With threats that the Scottish Cup final on Saturday may be the last, at least for the time being, one of the coaches involved in this weekend’s game has demanded that the competition should be saved. Bob McKillop, the Heriot’s coach, sees it as a core part of the second half of the season that seems to drift aimlessly after the league effectively ends in January.

It is a busy time at Murrayfield, with the Cup, Shield, Bowl and Plate finals all in one day at the start of May, and the finale of the International Series Sevens at the stadium at the end of next month, with Scotland facing a tough draw in their hunt for a place in the knockout stage of the main competition that depends on results against South Africa, the second seeds, Australia and Argentina in the pool stage.

With New Zealand well on their way to wrapping up this season’s title well before the finale - unlike last year when it was only the final match at Murrayfield that brought them the points to overhaul Fiji and claim the overall crown - interest centres on the minor placings and the performance of the home team, who qualified for ten successive quarter-finals before losing their way in two most recent events.

In the meantime, Edinburgh, the stadium’s playing tenants, are preparing their squad for next season by signing up a series of apprentices out of the academy for professional contracts, including Kyle Traynor, the Watsoni-ans captain, Sean Crombie, the hooker who helped Boroughmuir to the Scottish Hydro Electric Premiership title, and Steven Turnbull, the lock who would have been playing in the cup final but for an injury that has ruled him out of the big occasion.

At least he is certain to get a chance to play again at the stadium, unlike his Heriot’s teammates who may find that the game’s administrators, who seem determined to keep the part of the season around the RBS Six Nations Championship clear from domestic club action, clearing the way for doing more work with the age-grade and development systems.

While the proposal has some support in the Borders, where clubs complain about the cost of making long trips to play minnows in the early rounds and the disruption the Scottish Cup causes to the long-established Borders League, McKillop maintains that players and coaches across the rest of the country are happy with the way it is at the moment.

“It has given the second part of our season a real focus,” he said. “I know what it means to the individual players having that ambition of getting to Murrayfield and playing there and for the ones who make it, it is a big event in their careers. It would be a great shame if that were taken away.”

As McKillop pointed out, it is probably even more important to the players in the minor finals. Many of those turning out for the likes of Heriot’s and Melrose have had experience of playing at the national stadium at some level or have ambitions to get there by winning professional contracts. For the smaller clubs playing purely social rugby, this is a true once-in-a-lifetime experience.

“When I played during the 80s there were big occasions for club players all the time,” McKillop said. “I got to play against the current internationals, the likes of the Hastings brothers and all those people, but things have changed and there would be no big set-piece event for the club players if you took the Scottish Cup away.”

The proposals for scrapping the Cup are being circulated among the clubs at the moment and are likely to feature in a motion at the Scottish Rugby Union annual general meeting in June, proposed by George Jack, who will be submitting himself for reelection. The main object of the exercise is to again restructure the league season, but if that means further reducing the importance of the latter part of the season, there could be serious objections from the clubs who are already struggling to survive with only five months of income-generating competitive rugby a year.