Capital derby pick of festive frenzy

SCOTLAND'S footballers will have their busiest ever festive season this year, with four rounds of SPL fixtures in the eight days from Saturday, 23 December. The Edinburgh derby, traditionally held on New Year's Day, but omitted from the period last season, will be held at Tynecastle on Boxing Day this year, and shown live on Setanta with a 2pm kick-off.

The 2006-07 season begins on 29 July at 12.30pm, when Celtic begin the defence of their title at home to Kilmarnock. Four other matches follow at the customary time of 3pm, while Paul Le Guen will take charge of Rangers for the first time in a competitive match when his team visit Motherwell the following day.

Celtic's next SPL game is against Hearts away on Sunday, 6 August but inbetween they face a gruelling trip to Japan for a friendly with Yokohama Marinos.

Rangers' supporters will be less pleased than their counterparts in Edinburgh with the Christmas schedule - their team visit Aberdeen on 23 December, then play at Inverness four days later.

Hibs, by contrast, have home games on 23 and 30 December and 1 January in addition to the short trip to Gorgie. This makes up for last season when the Leith side had to travel to Inverness on Boxing Day and Kilmarnock at New Year.

While the selection of live Sunday matches was announced yesterday, other than the opening day the SPL and Setanta have yet to decide on which matches they will have in their other slots - early Saturday, late Saturday, and Friday and Monday evenings. Colin Davidson, Setanta's executive producer, said that, while some options were likely to prove more popular than others, claims that one had already been scrapped were premature.

"We'll give all of them a try over the course of the season," Davidson stated. "Then at the end a view will be taken on what has worked and what hasn't.

"We know the police have reservations about matches taking place on a Friday night, but there have been no round-table discussions yet with the various interested parties. Friday can work for live football, because the night is still young when matches finish at 10pm. It may turn out to be the least popular slot, and I think it's fair to say you won't get an Old Firm game on then, but we could have matches involving other clubs then."

The fixture list released yesterday runs up to the 33-game split, and includes the matches planned to be broadcast on Sunday afternoon. Davidson stressed, however, that those games could be switched to allow clubs more time to prepare for European ties. "Take the first Old Firm match [at Celtic Park] on Saturday, 23 September, for example," he explained. "The following week is a Champions League week, and if Celtic are playing in it on the Tuesday we would move their match with Rangers back to the Saturday. AberdeenvHearts would then become the Sunday game.

"Obviously if it was Hearts playing in the Champions League on the Tuesday we'd keep their game on the Saturday. If Hibs are in the UEFA Cup we'd show a similar flexibility about their league matches. It's in our best interests too for our clubs to go as far as possible in European competition."

Although there is no Old Firm game until the eighth round of fixtures, the schedule will still provide an early guide to the relative form of last season's top three. Hearts, the runners-up, face Celtic and Rangers in the opening four weeks.

"We are an ambitious club, and we have a group of ambitious players," Steven Pressley, the Tynecastle captain, said. "Playing the Old Firm so early on gives us a terrific opportunity to show what we are capable of. These are the games players really look forward to, and I see no reason why we cannot enter into either of them with great belief and confidence."

Tony Mowbray, the Hibs manager, saw nothing either favourable or unfavourable in the fixture list. "You know you have to play everyone," he said. "The onus on managers and players is to be ready for each fixture as it comes along, and that's what we will be concentrating on."

Hearts' first Edinburgh derby match against Hibs is on Saturday, 14 October, at Easter Road, which is also the venue for the third clash between the pair, on the last day of March. The second and third Old Firm games are 16 December at Ibrox and 10 March at Celtic Park.

Taken from the Scotsman