Let’s all be Spartans fans for fairytale cup clash with the mighty Dons - Vladimir McTavish

Ainslie Park was packed to the rafters for the Scottish Cup tie between Spartans and Hearts in January (Picture: Lisa Ferguson)Ainslie Park was packed to the rafters for the Scottish Cup tie between Spartans and Hearts in January (Picture: Lisa Ferguson)
Ainslie Park was packed to the rafters for the Scottish Cup tie between Spartans and Hearts in January (Picture: Lisa Ferguson)
Feel good stories in Scottish football are few and far between, so to see a wee North Edinburgh club one game away from a Hampden Park semi-final is true fairytale stuff.

Hopefully today one such story will be written when my local side take on the might of a former European trophy winning team.

This evening, lowly Spartans from League Two, Scottish football’s fourth tier, will travel up to Aberdeen to play the second-best team in the country. A side unbeaten in all competitions this season, who sit neck-and-neck with Celtic at the top of the Premier League. Hopefully that invincible run ends tonight, in this much-anticipated quarter-final of the Scottish League Cup.

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Spartans are the epitome of the footballing dream, a grassroots community club getting to mix it with the big boys. At the start of the year, they gave Hearts an almighty fright in the Scottish Cup before going down 2-1. Not only that, the game at Ainslie Park was shown live on TV. The entire green half of Edinburgh were cheering them from the rafters, while the Maroon side of town were nervously watching the game from behind the sofa.

However, there can surely be nobody in the whole of Edinburgh who will not be behind them tonight. Were it to be Hibernian up against Aberdeen, I’m guessing a load of Hearts fans would be rooting for the Dons. Likewise, if the Jambos were travelling up to Pittodrie, most Hibees would hoping they would be on the end of a leathering in the Granite City.

This is the kind of fairytale fixture that makes football so compelling. Let us not forget that 40 years ago Aberdeen captured the hearts of the whole country when they won the old European Cup-Winners Cup in Gothenburg, having beaten the likes of Real Madrid and Bayern Munich on the way. We were all Aberdeen supporters that night, apart from a few bitter Rangers fans and most of the population of Dundee.

Today, Spartans stand on the brink of an equally seismic upset. Let’s hope everyone in the Capital gets right behind them, and that they knock out Aberdeen. That would give the whole of Edinburgh something to cheer about. And the folks of Dundee would be delirious too.

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