THIS Hampden-Murrayfield business is all becoming a bit like Brexit – except with more uncertainty over the outcome. When it comes to the fate of our national stadium, the Scottish sporting public has divided itself along party lines into leavers and remainers for some time now but anyone hoping for a final decision yesterday as to which side of the M8 the Scotland football team would be playing its football on for the next 20 years, not to mention those thorny Scottish Cup semi-finals and finals, were sorely disappointed.

After six hours of deliberations, the SFA board gave both parties a week to come up with a few final details. Still, what is another seven days’ of extra time when you have been the ancestral home of the Scottish international team for 106 years?

In fact, even a further seven days seems a tad optimistic when it comes to the timescale going forward. While this mysterious additional information both bidders have been given to submit will indeed have to arrive in a week’s time, that takes us into the midst of preparations for Scotland’s international friendly with Belgium next Friday and next Monday’s UEFA Nations League opener against Albania. As it seems a bit unseemly to be involved in all this whilst occupied with the SFA’s main business of winning football matches, any final determination will have to wait a while longer.

In the spirit of those tedious Brexit debates, some this morning will no doubt put this down as a further piece of epic paper shuffling from faceless bureaucrats, but as much as this had been billed as D-Day for the national stadium in reality that never seemed particularly likely to be the case.

The SFA’s communications team had been at pains to manage expectations for days. Given the human implications of the board’s decision, with in excess of 100 members of staff employed in this Mount Florida stadium, chief executive Ian Maxwell was never likely to be making grave pronouncements without having every detail fine-tuned. He was joined on the decision-making seven-man board by the old guard of president Alan McRae and vice president Rod Petrie, Alloa Athletic chairman Mike Mulraney and SPFL chief executive Neil Doncaster of the SFA’s professional game board, Thomas McKeown of the non-professional game board and Ana Stewart, the only independent non-exec on the board right now. Whether geographical or financial, many of them had their own chips in the game, with a joint bid from Celtic and Rangers to share games rejected on cost grounds in January.

In another echo of Brexit debates, there has been a fair bit of claim and counter claim about the financials involved in this decision. Scottish Rugby claimed that moving Scotland matches and the latter stages of Scotland’s cup competitions to Murrayfield could generate an additional £40m over the next 20 years, but that calculation was dependent on selling out the 67,000-seater stadium, something Scotland can hardly guarantee right now.

Similarly, while Queen’s Park looked to be home and hosed when they agreed in principle to sell the stadium to the SFA in March, their part of the equation has been complicated by quoting a figure of £6m – more than twice what the SFA were expecting to pay. While the Spiders feel that is the minimum they would require to make any changes required to make Lesser Hampden operational for senior football and maintain their respected youth academy, the other clubs know that means less hand-outs for them.

Having spent Tuesday morning getting the tour and final sales pitch from SRU chief operating officer Dominic McKay then decamping to the other side of the M8 to speak to Peter Dallas of Hampden Park Ltd – a wholly-owned subsidiary of the SFA which runs the stadium – in the afternoon, yesterday was spent locked in the board room for what was said to be ‘healthy debate’. Beginning at 10am it was touching 4pm before Mulraney, the only man who didn’t park his car deep within the bowels of Hampden, departed – keeping his counsel as he went. So quiet was the intervening period you might have imagined tumbleweed blowing across the place.

A three-line statement was all the gathered media got, which perhaps tellingly left out any mention of where Betfred Cup showpiece matches might be hosted. The SFA are thought to be keen to have a speedy conclusion so this wasn’t exactly kicking it into the Tynecastle grass, but with the current lease not due to expire until Euro 2020 is out of the way, the really bad news is that there might just be time for further deliberation yet.