Falkirk bin the banter years as man pivotal to Invincibility names every club who revelled in Bairns' pain

His fondest footballing memories as a Bairn were of following his grandpa to games home and away.

As a teen he’d board the bus from Grangemouth with his mates to bellow at Brockville. Yet when Falkirk called in 2021 asking him to swap the chief exec reins at Stenhousemuir for theirs, Jamie Swinney said no. Seeing John McGlynn’s side lift the League One trophy yesterday, having pulled off Invincible status, it was one of those days when he’s glad he changed his mind.

It also happened to be his fifth wedding anniversary. In fact, the day he married fellow Falkirk fan Natalie was the one they tumbled out of the Championship. There have been many days, in between relegation and redemption, when he has wondered what made him return to a club that made him redundant when ditching their youth academy. In December 2017, the 37-year-old learned via social media after a night spent out coaching that his job as head of youth and head of operations was gone, leaving “hundreds of kids upset”.

He’d be forgiven, then, for being hesitant when approached inside four years to take up the reins. Swinney said: “From the outside looking in, my first thoughts were: ‘The club are in an absolute mess.’ I’d been made redundant by them a few years earlier so had lost a bit of my love for the club. The fact the club had been in League One for a couple of seasons, their financial stability – there was a whole bunch of concerns. It took me about five meetings with then chairman Gary Deans to decide I was taking the job. In fact, I rejected it at one point because I was so concerned about where the club were. I was asking questions and not always getting the answers I would have liked. I came home and told Natalie: ‘I’m not going to take it.’”

But