Hearts and Hibs on alert as SRU pave way for Scottish Cup semi-final showdown at Murrayfield

Scottish Rugby have declared Murrayfield open for business to host the Scottish Cup semi-final between Hearts and Hibs.

SRU chief exec Dominic McKay has paved the way for the all Edinburgh clash to be played at the home of rugby after Scottish FA president Rod Petrie proposed a possible switch from Hampden and insisting this season’s competition will be completed.

But Petrie also questioned the wisdom of allowing up to 50,000 supporters from Edinburgh to travel through to Glasgow for the tie and a solution would be found by playing the last four clash in the capital.

He said: “We need to be open-minded enough to look at all considerations.”

Celtic have been paired with Aberdeen for the other tie which was scheduled for the national stadium last month before the full consequences of the coronavirus hit home but McKay is adamant Murrayfield will be offered up as the perfect base to host major sporting events in the midst of the crisis.

McKay was part of a virtual summit between the Scottish FA, SPFL, sport minister Joe Fitzpatrick and professor Jason Leitch on Tuesday and he voiced his belief the capital stadium has a huge part to play in a bid for the resumption of sport in this country.

He said: “If there was an opportunity to play football games at Murrayfield we’d be very happy to do that. One of the things we spoke to the government yesterday was about strategic locations across Scotland earmarked as locations for sport resuming.

(SNS)

"We were making the point that Murrayfield lends itself beautifully to being a sporting bubble because we have training facilities, we have a gym and we have the stadium itself to host games.

"The whole environment and campus lends itself to being a sporting bubble. If that can be used by other sports, we’d be delighted to do that because genuinely collaboration is the name of the game at the moment, to help each other step by step get sport restarted.

“We’ve got a proud history of hosting football games, whether it’s Liverpool last year against Napoli or Hearts playing a number of home games.”