St Johnstone at Hampden sets up another magical day for Celtic fans.

And so, it is St Johnstone.

We now know who our cup semi-final opponents are going to be, and it’s the team from Perth. That’s who stands between us and a return to another Hampden final—and the chance to win the treble.

If we get there, our opponents will be either Aberdeen or Hearts. Aberdeen are the form team of the two and are on a good run at the moment after recovering from their dismal start to the season. It promises to be an interesting game.

For most of us, the emotion right now is just gladness that we’re here—gladness that we’re on the brink of yet another historic achievement. The club across the city can kid itself all it wants about better times ahead, but as long as we keep racking up the trophies and titles, their future is going to look an awful lot like the past.

An awful lot like a club embroiled in a series of defeats.

Celtic marches on. Celtic marches on without looking back, without a backward glance to see what our rivals might be up to. We pursue our strategy regardless of what happens across town. Why should we not?

They have been rendered an irrelevant joke. Our mission is clear: to keep on putting trophies in the cabinet, to grow our power, to extend it beyond Scotland and into Europe. That’s the mandate.

And the next step on that journey is to play the team from Perth. Now, this does complicate one thing for us. Had St Johnstone played one of the other two teams and made the final, that might have gotten us a better ticket allocation.

As it is, Aberdeen or Hearts are going to demand—and probably get—a flat 50% or whatever the SFA decides, after they’ve carved up the territory with the sponsors and everyone else.

That’s the only downside of it. People will say we’ve got the easiest of the three games. That doesn’t matter at all. I’d have been perfectly happy to take on any of them, and I’d be privately confident of beating any of them. But this puts us on the brink of the final—and the brink of the treble. And we can really start looking forward to what will be a very special occasion.

Although we’ve won a number of them in the past decade, a treble is always something to treasure.

What a lucky generation of fans this is.

What amazing good fortune to have been brought up at this time. All those titles, all those trebles, all those trophies. For someone like me, this is extraordinary, having spent so many years in the 90s and early 2000s without seeing sustained success until Martin O’Neill came along.

Even then, it was sporadic. It wasn’t like this. It wasn’t just winning all the time—getting to the point where a treble is something you expect to win rather than a once-in-a-blue-moon occurrence.

We are incredibly fortunate, all of us, to be watching this right now. But I feel especially good for the fans who haven’t seen anything else, and I dread the bad days if they’re coming for those guys, because it’ll hurt like hell. For those of us who endured years of hurt, this is a reward for having done so. This feels like the light at the end of the tunnel. The sunlit uplands. The come-down from here would be hard.

So these days, all these days, I enjoy as much as I can. And on the day we win this treble—if we win this treble—I’ll celebrate it as if it were the first and as if it might be the last. It won’t be the last. It’s just not the first.

But I’ll treat it as if it were, and I will treasure it, and all the people who celebrate with me, and be thankful for all the good times we’ve seen—and for all the good times we’ve yet to see. And I’m ready for that day and I have total faith and confidence in this manager and in this team to get it over the line.

Not long to go. 9 in the league, two at Hampden. Then we can celebrate.

Photo by Alan Harvey/SNS Group via Getty Images

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