Bairns CEO: We'd a case.. common sense prevailed

COMMON SENSE... two words that can at times seem foreign in the Scottish game.

- BY ALAN ROBERTSON

But Falkirk CEO Jamie Swinney insists it has prevailed on their pitch dispute - as only the legal profession stood to benefit from it dragging on.

The SPFL said this week, despite a ban on artificial pitches in the top tier from next term, a year’s grace until 2027 has been granted to the Bairns.

Given they only laid it two years ago, before a vote of the Premiership clubs and while still in League One, a standoff was always brewing.

And without a compromise of sorts, Swinney claims arbitration is the only place this was headed. “I think we can almost say certainly,’ he said.

“We had legal advice. We had, in our opinion and in the legal firm’s opinion, a pretty good case and one we could have won.

“The reason we've not gone down that road overall is one, it starts to create division and obviously has a lot of cost attached to it as well.

“But what we asked the SPFL to do was find a level of compromise and they have.

“Therefore, we've been true to our word all the way through it that if we felt there was a reasonable support package, we could drop arbitration.

“However, we'd have been duty bound by our fans and shareholders to go to arbitration if we were getting no support because there was enough of a case there.”