Underdogs can live in hope on cup day for two codes

A pair of venerable and splendid - if somewhat faded - sporting traditions will overlap in Edinburgh tomorrow. Two cups - Calcutta and Scottish - will dominate the day in the rival football codes and if the wind is from the right quarter, the games may even mingle.

Should the North Sea or the Firth of Forth yield a stinging, salt-laden gale, the sort Edinburgh matrons refer to as "a fresh wee breeze" - but which is the climatic equivalent of happy slapping - a misplaced drop kick from Murrayfield could bounce into Tynecastle and a ballooned penalty effort from the Hearts ground could waft over the crowd at the home of Scottish rugby.

Either way, the day's events are redolent of a vanished era. The Calcutta Cup, of course, was fashioned from melted-down silver rupees from the Raj and the Scottish Cup is the oldest continuously contested trophy in football. The prize, which will be presented to the winners of the tournament at Hampden Park on May 13 is the same piece of silverware which was brandished on March 21, 1874, by the jubilant Queen's Park players who had beaten Clydesdale 2-0 in the final.

There were no Celtics and Rangers in the Scottish Cup then and there are none now, so the door is wide open to the dreams of the eight survivors. Hearts are favourites, as befits the team who have won the trophy on six occasions, most recently in 1998.

Hearts' opponents at Tynecastle, Partick Thistle, have one final victory to their credit, back in 1921. Falkirk and Hibernian, who meet at Westfield, have each done it twice, but no living Hibs supporter remembers the last occasion the Easter Road side brought the Cup back to Edinburgh, on April 16, 1902.

St Mirren are three times winners, the last time being in 1987 and Dundee have won it once in 1910. The two remaining sides, Hamilton Academical and Gretna, have never laid hands on the trophy, although the way this Scottish season has unfolded it would be unwise to wager too much against either of them doing so in May.

The Calcutta Cup and Scottish Cup quarter-final dates coincide every so often, one notable example being March 18, 1990, the last occasion on which the Scots won the Grand Slam. The former England hooker, Brian Moore gave an account of that event in these pages yesterday.

However, Moore's memoir was selective; he did not mention the English players asking their girlfriends and wives to take photos of them on the pitch an hour before kick-off, before they muddied themselves on the scene of their predicted victory.

As I left Murrayfield I came across more of the sort of thing that gives hubris a bad name - a trampled white sweater embroidered with the legend, 'England, Grand Slam Champions, 1990.'

But why was I, a football correspondent at Murrayfield on Scottish Cup quarter-final day? Well, the Scottish Football Association and the BBC were in dispute and the SFA had banned Beeb personnel from the Cup, so I switched codes for the afternoon.

In a pub near Murrayfield afterwards, I spotted a man in full Highland dress standing at the bar, looking utterly dejected. "Why the long face on a day like this?" I asked.

"I missed it all - I was best man at a f***ing wedding," he replied. He was not alone in being downcast.

Rangers, captained by Terry Butcher, had been knocked out of the Scottish Cup by Celtic in the previous round, and were grinding out a drab goalless league draw away to St Mirren.

"Suddenly I heard the chant, 'Terry, Terry, what's the score?' and I thought it was the St Mirren fans," Butcher recalls. "Then I realised it was our lot as well and I thought, 'Bloody hell, England have lost the Grand Slam'!

"At least the England rugby lads were safe in their dressing-room. I had to put up with it all afternoon…."

Taken from telegraph.co.uk