GIVEN the circumstances you could have understood if there had been little call for an end-of-season celebration at Brockville on Saturday.
In recent weeks Falkirk have gone into liquidation, leaving the manager and players uncertain about their future. They've also clinched runners-up spot in the first division, knowing that league reconstruction would deny them the chance of a premiership play off.
On Saturday, outgoing chairman George Fulston collapsed at half-time and was rushed to Falkirk Infirmary. Then Airdrie go and beat them in possibly the last match at the old Brockville stadium.
But the Bairns partied anyway. The fans stayed on after the final whistle to demand a lap of honour from their side in a rather touching reminder of the place a football club can hold in the local community.
Airdrie's party-pooper in chief, however, was keeper John Martin, a Diamond veteran of 18 seasons standing. Saturday's display suggested he was far from ready to hang up his gloves.
The 39-year-old could have faced a premature exit, if referee John Underhill had been in sterner mood, when after 40 minutes he made a reckless charge out of his box to flatten Marino Keith.
But before that aberration he had already saved a Scott Crabbe penalty and in the second half he went on to deny Paul McGrillen and David Moss excellent opportunities to cancel out Gordon Connelly's strike for Airdrie, taken after 46 minutes.
On Saturday's display you could see why Airdrie rile so many fans of other clubs - they are mighty difficult to beat.
Stuffy, well organised, and not prone to error, Alex MacDonald's men took three points from a game Falkirk dominated.
The Diamonds have their own celebrations to look forward to next season when they christen their new home, and Alex Totten is hoping he will still be around to take Falkirk there in the autumn.
Teddy Jamieson
Falkirk ............... 0
Airdrie ............... 1
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article