WITH one errant sweep of Tom Rogic's left boot, Rangers were free. All that struggling through the lower reaches of the Scottish game felt strangely like a hallucination as four years of frustration evaporated into the Hampden air.

While some bang on about new clubs and old clubs, a small cottage industry has sprung up to investigate the small print of the five-way agreement which led to the Ibrox club's messy rebirth in the summer of 2012. Fans of both sides still harbour grievances about how their financial apocalypse was handled.

But this was an Old Firm match alright. It looked like one and smelled like one. And as they trooped disconsolately out of Hampden yesterday, even the most fervent Celtic fan would grudgingly admit they have a new rival when it comes to the major silverware up for grabs in Scottish football. And it looks remarkably like the old one.

It is Rangers, and not the Parkhead side, who will return to the national stadium in May to take on Hibs in the William Hill Scottish Cup final. How their supporters had waited for this moment. It almost, but not quite, made the final itself an irrelevance.

The quality on the park might not be up there just yet with the days when the De Boers and the Larssons mixed it on Mount Florida but victory in May will take Rangers back into Europe, and unlike last year's League Cup semi-final, when Kenny McDowall's outmatched squad seemed pleased just to hear the final whistle with limited damage, this was what we had been waiting for, a worthy addition to the age-old series for millions of worldwide TV viewers and watching Barclays Premier League footballers Phil Jagielka and Craig Gardner and their WAGs to savour. In the form of Patrick Roberts' first half open goal, it even had an equivalent to Peter van Vossen.

There is always, of course, a danger of reading too much into one performance or one result. It is one thing to go toe-to-toe with an opponent for 90 minutes, quite another to match them stride for stride over 38 league matches. But there is an accumulation of evidence that Rangers under Mark Warburton are closing the gap on their historic rivals and this result will send reverberations across the city. His P45 may not arrive in the morning, as the Ibrox fans mercilessly sang, but we may not have to wait long for a final judgement to be passed on the Ronny Deila era at Celtic.

What else did yesterday mean? Well the first detour, as ever, after one of these matches, will be to the SFA compliance office. The main point of interest will be the behaviour of both sets of supporters, with banners and pyrotechnics at both ends at Hampden.

While the playing of an anthem from each club over the Tannoy before kick off was an attempt to keep the song book as clean as possible, a Celtic banner goading their rivals with the phrase 'Rangers then Zombies Now, Hun Scum Forever' is likely to land them in hot water, as will its riposte from the Rangers end 'Zombies are fictional, paedophiles are real'. It wasn't so long ago that Old Firm players were appearing in the High Court themselves as a result of their actions on derby day, but a football match broke out here and both sets of players kept their discipline admirably.

Not all of those players will still be in Govan next summer, and as important as the result was yesterday, equally vital was a sense of how close they are to Celtic, and how much squad strengthening work Dave King, the understated watching chairman, must sanction this summer.

Nicky Law, Nicky Clark and Dean Shiels, all of whom featured yesterday, could move on and perhaps there was a nod in the board's direction when Warburton named just five subs. He was without some notable players who will be here next season, in injured duo Martyn Waghorn and Harry Forrester, and the cup-tied Michael O'Halloran, while Accrington Stanley duo Josh Windass and Matt Crooks are merely the first stage of their summer refurbishment.

While referee Craig Thomson booked five men - Dominic Ball will miss the final - his was a quiet outing by the standards of this fixture. A bit like Joe Miller 1989 in reverse, his main crime was bizarrely over-ruling his linesman to award a throw-in to Rangers from which Barrie McKay scored the memorable 25-yard strike which looked to have won them the cup.

In fact, the two best players on the park were young and Scottish. While McKay, the scorer of the first league goal in Rangers journey, continued his coming of age with the man of the match award, Kieran Tierney's Old Firm debut saw him defend stoutly and lay one on a plate for Rogic to score the day's second equaliser.

The gap yesterday boiled down to penalty kicks, the first-such lottery between these teams outwith the 1974 Dryburgh Cup final. Bravely playing out from the back in the face of the Celtic press, Rangers dominated much of the play and twice led during the 120 minutes, only to surrender an equaliser within a minute of half time in both normal time then extra time.

In the shoot-out, those roles were reversed; it was Celtic who twice had the advantage, if not exactly the lead, but couldn't see it though. Once again they had failed to come through in a critical moment. This was their third straight Hampden semi-final defeat under Deila, and the one he simply could not afford to lose. The Parkhead board will act to rectify matters, not least because they can feel the hot breath of Rangers down the back of their necks.