THERE IS ALWAYS SOMETHING A LITTLE POIGNANT ABOUT THE LAST DAY OF THE SEASON, AND EVEN THOUGH THIS YEAR’S CONCLUSION IS MORE TEMPORARY THAN MOST – IT’S ONLY FIVE AND A HALF WEEKS UNTIL ABERDEEN’S NEXT COMPETITIVE OUTING, SCARCELY LONG ENOUGH FOR YOUR AVERAGE FOOTBALLER OF THE 1970S TO SOBER UP FROM THE END-OFSEASON PARTY – IT HAS A SADDENING FINALITY TO IT IN ONE RESPECT.

Sunday is the last occasion on which we will see the superlative Russell Anderson marshaling his troops in the red and white of Aberdeen, and if he has a lump in his throat, he will not be alone.

Though his move from dressing room to back office means that it is not entirely goodbye, it closes the book on the finest Aberdeen defender of his generation and a player whose skills merit mention alongside the very best to have represented this great club in its 112 years of existence. Put simply, Russell Anderson is an Aberdeen legend. At his peak – and it is harsh to call it a peak, for it represented such a sustained period of flawlessness that it would be more correct to refer to it an extremely elevated plateau – Anderson was the best defender in Scotland: however scant was the international recognition he received, the Red Army know the true quality of his play over the course of his first spell at Pittodrie. From 1999 to 2007, catastrophic knee injury was the only opponent he was unable to stop, and even then he had the last laugh by returning from his Hampden horror to be even better than he had been before.

But for all the serene majesty of over 300 matches of his first Pittodrie reign, he will remember most fondly – and be best remembered for – being the man who lifted his right fist and smashed the 2014 Scottish League Cup through a glass ceiling under which his club had been labouring since he first turned professional.

It is typical of the immaculate Anderson that the long-awaited trophy success should have been achieved thanks largely to a defence, with him at its heart, which went unbreached for the entire eight and a half hours of the competition. If ever a captain could be said to have led his team to history by sheer force of will alone, it was Anderson: powerful at Motherwell; composed on the suspension tightrope against St Johnstone; a man of destiny in the final itself.

There were many reasons to celebrate that victory but not the least among them was that it finally gave Russell Anderson, the most unassuming of heroes, his moment on the stage and his picture on the stadium walls. It was a triumph for the club as a whole, but by extension one for each and every soul who had so desperately wished and fought for it, and few had given more of themselves in that quest than our Captain.

He simply could not have been allowed to end his playing career without experiencing that ultimate success, for which he had spent so many years toiling alongside men with a fraction of his gifts.

If Russell Anderson is even ten percent as good at his new job as he has been in this one, Aberdeen will have one heck of a Business Development Executive on their hands. It will be odd to see him at Pittodrie in a suit, but in our memories and in the club’s hall of fame there are plenty of memories from 407 manful shifts in the serious business attire which he dons today for the final time. Whatever he brings to the club’s future, he has made an indelible mark upon its eternal past. Russell loon, I can’t believe it’s all over.

You were absolutely phenomenal. Thank you.