The game that means nothing and everthing
I voted for James Forrest to win the Player of the Year award, but I would go for someone else if I didn't think he would turn up to accept it at the Scottish Football Writers Association dinner on May 19.
Forrest was a no-show at the PFA Scotland awards ceremony last night and his honour was accepted on his behalf by former Celtic striker Andy Walker.
A no-show is a bad show unless the absentee has a really good excuse.
If not, then he has insulted his fellow professionals and let down the club he plays for as well as the union which represents him.
The good times should never be taken for granted in the game of football because the absolute certainty is there will one day be bad times.
It is eight in a row for Celtic now where league titles are concerned and their weekend would have looked even tidier if Forrest had attended his own coronation when he was crowned Player of the Year.
The award could always be handed over to him at Ibrox on Sunday because there's nothing much else going on. This is the Old Firm derby which means absolutely nothing, and everything.
In terms of the Premiership title, it means the square root of hee-haw after Celtic's win at Pittodrie on Saturday.
It doesn't affect anything at all with regard to second place either, Rangers having already assumed the role of runner-up.
So, if the bragging rights are well established, what is left?
On this occasion, an exercise in malice and malevolence I suspect.
It is the last chance for the season to settle old scores, re-open festering wounds and generally create an atmosphere that will be ugly in the extreme.
The presence of only a few hundred Celtic fans will vouch for the enmity which currently exists between the clubs, and that is never healthy.
The presence of Scott Brown, the Celtic captain, will provoke visible and audible hostility on a level which could register on the Richter Scale.
The singing from both sets of fans is likely to be distasteful, and the race to say who started it first entirely predictable.
What you won't get in the midst of these febrile frolics is a match which actually proves anything.
The assertion made by Rangers' chairman, Dave King, that his club are within touching distance of dominating Scottish football was always an ill-judged publicity stunt.
Celtic being ninety minutes away from a treble treble only serves to illustrate that point.
When the sides next meet, at some point next season, supremacy might well be a topic for discussion since both clubs will surely undergo a summer of radical transition in the playing squad department.
Celtic and Rangers will be tooled up, as they say, for the beginning of what could be described as the most contentious phase of their acrimonious history.
For Celtic to win Nine in a Row for a second time would spark wild celebration and a furious reaction.
That is why Steven Gerrard has to win the title, or else.
A Rangers fan called Superscoreboard on Saturday evening to say he had no intention of congratulating Celtic on winning the title, and that's understandable.
Why on earth would he feel happy about his great rivals winning Eight in a Row.
From the start of next season the two biggest clubs in the country will be engaged in a bitter battle to prevent history being re-written.
In the meantime we need to get Sunday out of the way with as little cause for retrospective action as possible.
There's Neil Lennon's return to Ibrox as Celtic's manager. Alfredo Morelos. Brown. Residual resentment over the red cards handed out to Morelos and Ryan Kent the last time the sides met.
What could possibly go wrong?
Just about anything, since you ask.
The SFA's Compliance Officer will doubtless be alert to anything which runs contrary to the best interests of Association Football.
And the clamour to get one another into trouble will be mandatory for both sets of fans.
The score stands at 2 - 1 in Celtic's favour where this season's derby matches are concerned. If Rangers made it a draw it would hardly be earth shattering since they have hit a decent run of form of late.
But it'll be a lot of fuss about precious little beyond localised rivalry.
The real stuff has yet to come