Scottish Cup final: Hearts' Craig Gordon wants another medal for his attic

Gianluigi Buffon is a godsend to all goalkeepers, an inspiration to all the veterans coming in his wake. When the subject of age is mentioned, as it was when the 37-year-old Craig Gordon sat down to talk about Sunday's Cup final against Celtic, the Buffon argument is put on the table in the way a poker player might reveal a royal flush.

Gordon will turn 38 in a few weeks. Intentions of winding down? Zero. "I love getting out of bed in the morning, love chucking myself about in the mud," he says. Hunger for the game? Same as it ever was. Greater, if anything.

He didn't mention Buffon by name, but you knew where he was coming from. 'See, Gigi? Forty-two years of age and almost 43. Made a ton of saves for Juve against Barcelona in the Champions League only last week. Still has it, the great man. Age is only a number.'

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There are other numbers to cite in Gordon's story, of course. As in the number of finals he has lost at Hampden - none - and the number of finals he was won at Hampden - nine. Now that includes a Youth Cup final with Hearts 20 years ago and two League Cup finals with Celtic where he stayed on the bench, but he's got nine consecutive winners' medals to his name all the same.

"I was hoping that wasn't going to come up," he smiles. The concept of 10-in-a-row is one that's been copyrighted by Celtic, and is now being challenged by Rangers, but what about his own personal 10-in-a-row? "It would be nice, very nice," is all he offers in reply.

'Taking medals out and looking at them for when I finish'

The medals are not in a beautifully lit display cabinet in the living room at home. If you walked into his house you wouldn't know about his glory-laden career. All the baubles are up in the attic where he can't see them. "I'm still very much in the moment," he says.

"Taking them out and looking at them is for when I finish. We're the underdogs on Sunday (he's never been an underdog in a final before) but if we win that one would go up in the attic as well. I'm still hungry for more success and once you start looking back at what you have and what you've done it can maybe take your focus away. I'm just striving for the next thing and the next thing. I'd love to show the medals off when the time comes, but it's not yet."

Gordon says he always found it a touch odd when going back to Tynecastle as a Celtic player and the reverse is true now - he's finding the prospect of facing Celtic as a Hearts player a little weird.

As a member of Brendan Rodgers' invincibles' of 2016-17 he wrote his name into the club's history. As a winner of five Premierships, five League Cups and two Scottish Cups with Celtic his contribution will never be forgotten in the east end of Glasgow. The pursuit of trophies in green as opposed to maroon might still be going on had circumstance not got in the way.

Gordon lifted the Scottish Cup on two occasions during his six years at Celtic

He left in the summer believing that Celtic were going to sign Fraser Forster on a permanent deal from Southampton. He'd only played six games in 2019-20 and the prospect of sitting on the bench for another season held no appeal. The way it turned out, of course, he could still be Celtic's first-choice goalkeeper.

The Forster deal never worked out. Celtic signed Vasilis Barkas for £5m and he's not working out either. They tried Scott Bain and he's now lost his place, too. Young Conor Hazard is in goal these days. Had Gordon stayed, the chances are that he'd be going into this final as a Celtic man not a Hearts man.

'There's no bad blood'

He has no regrets, though. He knows how lucky he is to have played for as long as he has, to have won the things he's won. Leaving Celtic was just part of life. "It wasn't messy and there's no bad blood," he says. "I wanted to go and play football. They were going down a different route, they could have got Fraser and I would have sat and not played for another year and that's something I didn't want to do.

"Even seeing what's happened there I wouldn't change a thing. I had a great time and left on good terms with all the coaches. I was speaking with (goalkeeping coach) Stevie Woods when I joined up with the Scotland squad, Neil Lennon phoned me after I left and wished me all the best, John Kennedy was excellent throughout the summer letting me know what was happening."

Having gone through cup final week so often with Celtic he knows exactly what they'll have been up to all week, knows exactly the calibre of individual that Hearts are going up against on Sunday. He's heard people saying that it's a free hit for his team, that nobody expects them to win. He's heard other people saying that it's a great opportunity, that this is the best time in years to face Celtic in a cup final.

Gordon and his Hearts team-mates celebrate the 2006 Scottish Cup final win over Gretna

There's one indisputable fact - Hearts are underdogs. "But underdogs can win football matches," he says. An underdog won in Paisley on Wednesday night when St Mirren knocked Rangers out of the League Cup.

In his own career, he's been involved in any number of shock games. France were supposed to beat his Scotland team in 2006 and 2007 but they lost both times. Inverness weren't supposed to beat his Celtic team in the 2015 Scottish Cup semi-final, but they did. Celtic might be living through hugely turbulent times but they've won 15 consecutive games at Hampden. Nobody in Scotland knows more about peaking on the day than Neil Lennon's players.

There is a hidden force driving Hearts. We don't need to trawl through the events of the summer again, but the feeling of injustice of getting dumped into the Championship remains strong. "Yeah, there's a lot of feeling towards that," Gordon explains. "I wasn't here but coming back to the club you got the sense that everybody here had something to prove and that's good, we can use that as motivation and put it on to the pitch.

"I might not have been at Hearts while it was all going on, but I've been a Hearts fan all my life so I knew how people were feeling. I have friends and family who felt it. There was an opportunity for everybody (in football) to come together and prevent all that and it didn't happen, for whatever reason.

"It's come up in the dressing room. We don't talk about it all the time, but we have spoken about it, especially when we're playing certain opposition that might have voted in a certain way. We're using that. We'll use anything we possibly can to get out of the league we're in and get back to where we belong."

Sixteen years ago, Gordon walked out into Hampden with Robbie Neilson as a team-mate. Now they're player and manager. "As a player he was fairly quiet but very professional, always in the gym, always trying to better himself and he's taken that ethic into coaching," Gordon says of his manager. "When he got the job in the summer he phoned me within hours and asked me about my situation. It was just like it was before. We picked up where we left off. It's nice the way it's come around after all these years."

In that cup final of 2006, Neilson assisted for the Hearts goal, made a goal-saving tackle and slotted home his penalty in the shoot-out. For his part, Gordon saved a penalty in normal time (Gretna scored the rebound), and saved one in the shoot-out. "It was a bit scary the way that final worked out but we got there in the end," he adds.

"The older you get the more these days mean to you. I'm so lucky to have been involved in so many of them, but you never know when your last one might be. This could be my last one and I have to go out and play like it is."

So many unforgettable days and, win or lose, a December final in a deserted Hampden will be another in the great story of the everlasting goalkeeper.