Cup finals are special for any team but growing up a Rangers fan they were almost taken for granted. We nearly always landed a league and cup in my years growing up, no matter what formation that came in, League and League Cup, League and Scottish Cup. Sometimes we were lucky enough to get all three.

Of course, there were some years we went without but we would always be back in amongst silverware fairly quickly. I still remember my first trip to Hampden, 9th May 1992. I stood in the Airdrie end. Almost unable to see at the tender age of nine. It also happened to be my first ever Rangers game and I'm pretty sure half the Airdrie end was also Rangers because as the goals went in it certainly seemed that way.

My oldest memories are of Rangers lifting silverware and that’s, as my Grandad would remind me, what this football club is all about. He'd say: ‘This is Rangers son, we win things’. A generation have had that stolen away from them by the events of 2012 and this football club has been fighting tooth and nail to make that a regular event once again. Make no mistake, it’s where this club belongs and it’s where we must strive to be.

Rangers have flirted with Hampden unsuccessfully since our return to the top flight, indeed some truly miserable trips have been had. When I grew up trips to the national stadium were almost always a happy trip. For a generation who hasn’t tasted that, or had it sporadically like with our Scottish Cup triumph the season before last, I hope this is the beginning of something more tangible and concrete.

I’m working at the game on Sunday for Rangers Review but over on the other side of the stand will be my young lad Jackson, just six and having fully embraced the Rangers bug, this is his first chance to see the team lift silverware. A season ticket holder all his short life, he took over my late father-in-law's seat next to my wife and I.  This is the first season he’s really taken to it.

He knows about 55, he knows about our Scottish Cup win but he hasn’t lived it like he has this team and this season. I’m told he is almost as vocal as his Daddy used to be in the Govan Front. He certainly celebrated like it as Abdallah Sima slammed home our eventual winner last week at Tynecastle. Pleading to be allowed to stay up and watch the second half. With his Mum, also a season ticket holder of 30 years, he will embrace Hampden with the hope of seeing a Rangers victory. There is a wave of young Rangers fans who we can’t afford to let miss out on tasting the success that I grew up taking for granted.

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Philippe Clement has done an excellent job of resurrecting this season with a steady and concentrated job on a team that was on its knees when he arrived. Despite that manager change, a horrendous injury list and what seems a daily puzzle to solve selection-wise, Clement has led the team to this cup final, reduced the deficit in the league and progressed the team beyond Christmas in European action.

That’s quite an achievement and if we are being fair, they have been good value the majority of the time he has been in the dugout. But it’s also fair to say the hard work is really beginning now as the fixture list ramps up. He has a golden opportunity now to cement that start at Hampden on Sunday and I sincerely hope he does. Not only for Clement but for the thousands of youngsters out there starved of their generation seeing a successful Rangers side.

Just as Mark Hateley and Ally McCoist would engrain themselves onto my mind with their heroics in my youth, I hope that on Sunday night Jackson and lots of other youngsters are reliving the glory of seeing Rangers lift a trophy live for the first time. Because that is what we are all about, this is what our football club is there to do. Win.

Nothing is a given, we have to earn it but I desperately hope, not only for the lost generation but this whole support, that our beloved football club are about to embark on a successful run like the ones I witnessed growing up.