CRAIG Gordon might have been lording it down the Kings Road by now with a bulging bank balance and a Barclays Premier League winners’ medal to his name, not to mention a chance to double his money in Saturday’s FA Cup final. But the goalkeeper hardly gave Chelsea’s title celebrations last week a second glance.

Rather than being an accessory to someone else’s successes, the Scotland goalkeeper knows it is far better to be the No 1 man in your own piece of historic sporting real estate. Only the fourth Treble in the club’s history, and a remarkable invincible domestic season, would certainly represent that.

The surviving members of the Lisbon Lions, whose names retain a currency 50 years on, could tell him a thing or two about that. As could the other, some might say lesser, members of the squad, whose names – rightly or wrongly – will never quite hold the same cachet.

“They [Chelsea] picked up the trophy but the chances are I might not have played many games in terms of achieving of that,” said Gordon, who saw a £2 million bid from Antonio Conte’s side rebuffed by Celtic in January.

“I walked out at Celtic Park [on Sunday] to the show of the Lisbon Lions, and basically the show of that whole day, and lifting the trophy, was phenomenal, brilliant. There would have been positives no matter what and I would have been quite happy with whatever would have happened. But that was a good day and hopefully there are more to come.”

You might imagine that Gordon, at the age of 34, has bucketfuls of Scottish Cup memories to call upon but in fact he has only played in the showpiece event of the Scottish game once – helping Hearts endure a nerve-jangling penalty shoot-out to rid themselves of minnows Gretna back in 2006.

He saved a Ryan McGuffie penalty in normal time, only to see the same man gratefully knock in the rebound, then saved from Derek Townsley in the shoot-out to leave Gavin Skelton needing to score to keep Gretna alive.

When his effort cracked the bar, Gordon could savour every goalkeeper’s dream of running away to celebrate as the cup final-winning hero in front of the fans.

“It was a great day,” recalled Gordon, “although it took us slightly longer to win the cup than we would have liked. It was a difficult game. It had been a long, hard season.

“We had a lot of changes, different managers but we still managed to split the Old Firm at the top of the league with not a very big squad.

“By the time we got to the cup final, we were kind of running on empty to try and get over the line and it took us penalty kicks to finally do it.

“I remember hearing the ball hitting the bar and just running away celebrating,” he added. “At no stage did I look behind me to see if the ball had rebounded down into the goal!

“Instinct told me it was too high but I didn’t check – that could have been an embarrassing moment for me.

“The Hearts fans filled three-quarters of the stadium that day, so I could really have run anywhere and been celebrating in front of them. But I’d dived to my right, so I just kept going that way. Even though I didn’t touch the ball, you wouldn’t have thought so from my celebration.”

Once again Gordon enters Scotland’s showcase match as an overwhelming favourite to win, ideally for his sake before the trauma of penalty kicks. Equally, Celtic would only be human if they let thoughts of falling short at the final hurdle affect them, but Gordon feels there is enough calmness and belief in the club’s methods to get through even if things don’t run exactly according to plan.

“You never think you are going to do that [go unbeaten] in a career – at any level in any league,” said Gordon. “The opportunity we have to go and do that now is enormous and it’s something that would be remembered for a very long time.

“But if we start looking beyond that at records and things that could be said in the future about this team, all that won’t matter if we don’t win the game.

“If we didn’t win the final it would take a bit of getting over. But we have an incredible opportunity to make sure that’s not the case.”