But he says the damage is not as bad as he first feared and hopes to play at Hampden Park on Saturday.

"It feels better today," the Northern Ireland international revealed.

"To be honest, I would play with one leg if that's the way its going to be."

Boyce insists, though, that he will not start the game if he feels he cannot be at his best.

"You don't want that to be to the detriment of the team, because obviously we have all worked hard to get here," the 31-year-old forward, who has scored 16 goals this season, said.

"Everyone has played their part and we want to give ourselves the best opportunity to win. If that's to be on the bench, and even if I was fully fit and they thought that was our best chance of winning, I would take it happily."

Manager Robbie Neilson, who will be unable to call on midfielder Beni Baningime through injury, is thankful Boyce's strain seems unlikely to rule him out of contention for the weekend.

John Souttar and Craig Halkett returned as second-half substitutes and fellow defender Michael Smith made his first start since February in the warm-up loss to Rangers as both sides made several changes.

"The only one who will be missing will be Beningme," said Neilson, who plans to finalise his starting XI after a bounce game on Tuesday. "It looks like Boyce will be fine. He didn't train today, but he will do a little bit tomorrow with a view to training on Thursday.

"When it happened during the game, your first thoughts are to worry about the final, but I saw him walk off then speaking to him afterwards and again yesterday and he seems pretty confident.

"There are a couple we might take a bit of a risk with. You are better to start with a risk than bring them on after an hour then they break down, but we will have a look at a couple of them then make a decision."