It made me a better player, though it was ironic that I should go off round the world and end up at Dunfermline, because that was my first club – and they released me.”Bullen has spent a long time climbing the football ladder. Meadowbank Thistle and Stenhousemuir preceded his move to Australia, before he spent four years in Hong Kong where he met his English wife. I am not completing this course in two years’ time simply to forget about it. After that, I have another two years of legal practice and then I can focus on law as a career.

I quite often go to the High Court in Perth to watch trials and see how lawyers work. When I was at Wigan, I would go to Preston Crown Court.”Bullen is equally gripped with a sense of adventure. However, in his case football offered an escape from the real world, not the other way round. He has two years left before graduation and will choose his next football club very carefully.”I started the degree when I was at Aberdeen but when I moved to Wigan, I had to switch from Scots Law to English Law,” Stillie explains. “I would not be at Hampden if I had not gone off on my travels. The 33-year-old worked in a building society before he packed his boots and headed off to play in Australia, Hong Kong and Greece.

“I always wanted to play for a living and when I was working behind a counter, it just fired me up to move,” he said. “When I moved back up here again to Dunfermline, the Open University would not entertain me switching back to Scots Law again. Stillie, the goalkeeper and Bullen, a midfielder, refused the offer of a new deal on reduced terms. Like Larsson, they are both in their early 30s, but neither La Liga nor retirement is an option for them as the next move, as it is for Celtic’s departing striker.At 31, Stillie is already making plans for the future.

The former Aberdeen and Wigan goalkeeper has spent the last four years combining football with an Open University law degree. The last blast of the whistle at the Scottish Cup final will signal an end to their time at East End Park and if there is a rich pay cheque still awaiting Celtic’s talisman, then the only thing awaiting Stillie and Bullen is uncertainty.Larsson will collect more than £1m from a special farewell game against Seville on Tuesday night when 60,000 people pay tribute to him at Parkhead. For Stillie and Bullen, though, the only reward will come in the shape of silverware today.Dunfermline’s precarious financial position has forced both men to look for security elsewhere when their contracts expire. The pair took a wage cut, like the rest of the Dunfermline dressing room, when the Fife club went cap in hand to its team in March to avoid embracing administration after running up debts of £7.5m.Although the Pars will make almost £1m from reaching their first Scottish Cup final in 36 years, that is not being given back to their manager, Jimmy Calderwood, to spread around his squad. Yet, they will be the only two people out of 52,000 at Hampden Park today who can truly empathise with the Swedish idol.
It is the final curtain for the Dunfermline Athletic pair, just as it is for Larsson. Derek Stillie and Lee Bullen will never match Henrik Larsson when it comes to money in the bank or mere column inches.