Click here to sign up to our free newsletters!
Having a month-long build up to a cup final is unusual to say the least, but for one Inverness Caledonian Thistle player there will be added significance to Saturday’s match.
The club’s youngest ever goalscorer, Daniel MacKay, is due to play his last game for the club before his loan deal expires and he returns to parent club Hibernian.
It will bring an end, for now at least, to a decade-plus association with the Caley Jags for the 22-year-old, spanning both his initial stint with the club and his current loan.
MacKay has already been involved in some memorable moments with Inverness.
In his debut campaign with the club, still just 16 years old at the time, he provided the assist for Carl Tremarco to score the winning goal in the Challenge Cup final against Dumbarton.
Going to Hampden to take on Celtic will be a slightly different challenge for the attacker.
However, if he can end up celebrating with another piece of silverware, he believes that could just be the perfect way to say goodbye to his boyhood club.
“I haven’t really thought about leaving that much,” MacKay reasoned.
“It’s a bit of an odd situation, because I’ve obviously been here before.
“The last time my last game was against Ayr, and I didn’t know it was going to be my last game, but this year I know it’s coming to an end.
“Hopefully I’ll be back at Hibs in the summer, so it’s not really something I’ve thought about but if it is going to be my last game it could be the ultimate high. You wouldn’t get much better than that.
“It could be one of those dream scenarios that you never thought could happen.
“Then it would be weird if that was my last game and I didn’t come back – but you never know what’s going to happen.
“I don’t think it could end much better than that though, I don’t think it could get any better at all.
“This is the big final in Scottish football. It’s the most historic cup, and it would mean a lot to me as a fan and as a player to win the trophy, because it’s not something that every player in Scotland gets to experience.
“We have a very lucky opportunity to be where we are on June 3, and hopefully we can make the most of it.”
MacKay was in the stands at Saturday’s opponents Celtic’s ground for the ultimately unsuccessful League Cup final in 2014, and was again among the fans the next year as Inverness lifted the Scottish Cup in 2015.
ICT and Celtic have a long association with each other in the Scottish Cup, intertwined in some of the most memorable upsets in the competition’s history.
MacKay, then, is relishing the prospect of going up against the Scottish champions and writing the next chapter in that story.
“Obviously the last time we won the cup it was the Josh Meekings handball,” MacKay recalled.
“It was great to be involved with the club then, even as a youth player. We went to the League Cup final at Celtic Park, and then we were at the Scottish Cup final too.
“The club has always gone on good runs in the Scottish Cup, even in my time as a full-time player we have gone on good runs.
“It has been good to Inverness, so hopefully we can continue that and make another bit of history.
“You always want to test yourself against the best players. In Scotland, Celtic are the best team at the moment, so it’s going to be a great test for us.
“It’s going to be a great test to see how far – or not – the club is from the Premiership, but we need to make sure we don’t just make up the numbers on the day.”