Queen's Park deal to use Hampden 'great' for Scotland teams, says SFA president
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Scotland's national teams will prepare for home games at Lesser Hampden
The Scottish FA's new president says the governing body's stadium deal with Queen's Park is "great" for Scotland's national teams.
Queen's Park will return to Hampden from September and, as part of the arrangement, Scotland teams will have access to the under construction Lesser Hampden for training.
"We had a window of opportunity to get access to a facility that the managers wanted and we took it," Mike Mulraney told BBC Radio Scotland's Sportsound.
"It's a great deal for the SFA. It's a great deal for Scotland and it's a great deal because it'll allows our national teams to prep in the manner that they want for the rest of this campaign.
"The national team managers are both very keen to get access to Lesser Hampden before the international matches. That was something the SFA were keen to do. Queen's Park obviously wanted to play at Hampden this season while they're still working at Lesser. For me, it was an absolute fit.
"Critically, the SFA will be financially recompensed in a manner that lets me ensure that we can bring another pitch. At least one or two more 3G pitches we can fund to help go down.
"We also secured a sensible return for the SFA to make sure that we can continue to build the funding that we need to get pitches throughout the length and breadth of Scotland. We need pitches."
Images were released this week detailing projected plans for a renovated Hampden as part of a joint bid to host major tournaments.
However, when asked if renovating the national stadium was a priority, Mulraney explained: "If somebody dropped me £500m, it wouldn't be for a rebuild of Hampden at the moment.
"We have recently secured some pretty meaty money or quite a big chunk of numbers, £20m, from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport that we are right now putting into grassroots football.
"We've got an issue just now where we've got a pretty stark shortage. We've no facilities. We're full at the moment. We want to grow our game, we want more people playing football and at the moment we just don't have enough pitches. That's one of the big challenges for us. We need our grassroots facilities improved right now."
Scottish Gas will be the sponsor of the women's and men's Scottish Cup tournaments from next season and Mulraney says the investment will have particular benefit for the women's game.
"It is by some very considerable way the biggest investment in the Women's Scottish Cup that you could imagine there being," Mulraney. "It's a significant six-figure sum going into the women's game annually."