LAST season's Scottish Cup Final will take place on December 20th, with Scottish Football Association chief executive Ian Maxwell citing fairness and the opportunity to have fans present as the driving factors behind the decision.
The traditional finale to the season was scheduled to take place on May 9th before being cancelled amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
The semi-final clashes, where Hearts will meet Hibernian and Celtic play Aberdeen, will now take place on October 31st and November 1st respectively before the festive final five days before Christmas.
Maxwell explained the reasoning behind the move yesterday, saying: “It was a combination of things. The fixture calendar is obviously a real challenge this year.
"We have one of the semi-finalists, Hearts, potentially not starting their season until October, notwithstanding the outcome of the arbitration case. They need to be given a chance to get ready.
“We have international windows with hugely significant games within them. The overriding ambition was to leave it as late as we possibly could to maximise the opportunity to get spectators into what is our biggest game of the season.
“I actually think a late December Scottish Cup Final will be really interesting and could be a really special event under the lights at Hampden.
“The financial driver to complete the 2019-20 tournament is club-led, as much as anything. The gate receipts are pooled between the semi-finalists and finalists and we have a distribution model which pays out over the course of the campaign.
“We have the 2020-21 competition to start, while there is also the complication of the Betfred Cup rescheduling. So it made sense from a sponsorship perspective to have a clean break between this one finishing and the next one starting."
Players will not be cup-tied even if they have previously played in the competition for another club, while five substitutes will be allowed for each side.
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