Heart of Midlothian will take more than 19,000 fans to Hampden Park for the Scottish Cup semi-final against Rangers on Sunday.

There has been a focus on Hearts and the sale of their 21,000 allocation after club representatives put forward "an extremely strong case" to the Scottish FA to secure an even split. As part of the agreement, the club would be required to cover the cost of any briefs that remain unsold.

The club have sold 19,000 with tickets on sale until 11.30am on Sunday at the club's ticket office.

In the past week, more than 500 tickers have been secured by Big Hearts to allow supporters who wouldn't normally get the chance to go to Hampden Park to watch such a fixture the opportunity to do so. The charity has organised buses and travel via train as well as food vouchers for those they are helping to attend.

The club's head coach Steven Naismith made the point in his broadcast press conference ahead of the game that if the club hadn't secured such an allocation they'd have not been able to take as many fans as they are.

“We’ll have 18,500-19,000,” he said. "If we didn’t fight for the 50/50 split, we wouldn’t have that many fans there. We’ve got more now than we were originally expecting to get which is good.”


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