THE SRU would be “very happy” to host the Scottish Cup semi-final between Heart of Midlothian and Hibernian at BT Murrayfield, the governing body’s Chief Operating Officer revealed yesterday.

Dominic McKay, who represented Scottish Rugby at a Covid-19 summit on Tuesday with sports minister Joe FitzPatrick and leading figures from Scottish football and racing, acknowledged that a return to sport could be some time away and would be dictated by health considerations. 

But he suggested that, if and when a resumption became possible, using Murrayfield as a key venue would make perfect sense. 

“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,” McKay 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 about yesterday was about strategic locations across Scotland earmarked as locations for sport resuming. 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.”

The two Edinburgh clubs had been due to play their semi-final at Hampden on Saturday 11 April, the day before Aberdeen and Celtic were scheduled to meet in the other semi at the same venue. SFA President Rod Petrie insisted earlier this week that this season’s Scottish Cup would be played to a finish, even if that meant games taking place late this year or possibly in 2021.