Bairns’ pound of flesh

Falkirk chief Jamie Swinney admits nothing else can come close to the financial shot in the arm a Hampden semifinal would deliver.

A lifelong fan, the 36-year-old was at all three Scottish Cup finals in the last 26 years the Bairns have featured in.

He’s followed them from the singing section at Brockville as a kid to a bar in Riga this month where a stag do he was on asked that Falkirk TV be stuck on to see a 5-0 pasting of Peterhead.

The buzz tomorrow’s clash with Ayr brings will be the same as ever, albeit there is now also a “large part of your brain saying financially this is massive if we can win”.

Already “well past what we budgeted for in this cup”, the chief exec said: “Regardless of whether we’re in League One or the Championship, next year’s going to be another really tough one as we try to rebuild the club.

“We’re growing all revenues and we are making real progress. But as a full-time club, the way the Scottish distribution model works, you only start to really make any money from the SPFL pot if you’re at the top end of the Championship or the Premiership.

“You make absolute pennies the further down you get, it’s 3.5 per cent of the whole pot comes to League One. So we get the tiniest, little crumb of money from the SPFL.

“Clearly if you can win a Scottish Cup quarterfinal and get to a semifinal, then that is going to generate money we simply couldn’t generate in any other way.”

Sitting second in the league, which tier John McGlynn and No.2 Paul Smith will operate in next term is up in the air.

But Swinney added: “Getting to Hampden would allow us to give them a bit more certainty about next year’s budget and say, ‘Look guys, we can now give you a kind of firm number.’”

While all three finals ended in defeat, Collin Samuel’s hat-trick in a 4-0 third-round rout in 2003 tops them all.

Swinney said: “I looked through to the Hearts fans with 30-odd minutes gone and they couldn’t believe what they were witnessing.

“Whatever happens in Scottish Cup football for this club, that game will always be remembered.”