Scottish Cup Final by the numbers

Today’s final game of the 2008-09 Scottish season is the The Homecoming Scottish Cup Final between Rangers and Falkirk at Hampden Park.

Rangers are chasing their 33rd Scottish Cup victory, which would put them one behind Celtic’s record 34, and Falkirk are after their third.

Rangers are also after an 18th domestic double, their 110th domestic trophy, while also trying to retain the cup they won last year by beating Queen of the South.

Walter Smith is going for his 17th trophy as Rangers manager, and if he is successful, it would also be he 4th domestic double.

There are 6 players on top of the goalscoring charts for this year’s competition, two playing today, the players with 3 goals:
Scott Dalziel (Stenhousemuir)
Scott Arfield (Falkirk)
Kenny Miller (Rangers)
Ian Diack (Brechin City)
Simon Lynch (Airdre United)
Chris Swailes (Hamilton)

This is the 17th Scottish Cup tie between the two sides, with Rangers winning 12, drawing 3 and only losing 1 of the previous 16.

Falkirk won a Fourth Round replay in 1927, but have lost to Rangers the next 7 times the two have been drawn together, the last in 1999.

As noted in a previous blog post, the previous 3 times when Rangers beat St Mirren in the semi-final, they have went on to lose the final…