It's always hard to know what to make of teams after the competitive edge of their season has been diminished with fixtures still to play.

Some act like they're already dreaming of their summer holidays and are merely going through the motions. Others use the lack of pressure to their benefit, moving around the pitch in a collective swagger and using the freedom to produce their best stuff.

Well, there's certainly no doubt which of the two applied to Falkirk on Saturday evening as the Bairns celebrated their League One title triumph in style with a resounding 7-1 victory over a Montrose side who held them to a 0-0 draw at Links Park earlier in the campaign.

Going into Saturday, John McGlynn's men knew they just required a victory to seal the championship, but the trophy was handed to them before their evening encounter, live in front of the BBC Alba cameras, even kicked off as second-place Hamilton Accies toiled to a 0-0 draw with relegation-threatened Queen of the South.

In such circumstances, members of the Falkirk XI would have been forgiven for failing a breathalyser test before their hosts got the match under way. It seemed like one of those instances where the 90 minutes of action would be nothing more than a prelude to a party, but instead Falkirk brought the celebrations forward by a couple of hours as they rained goal upon goal on their sacrificial-lamb opponents as the jam-packed away end sung heartily throughout the contest.

It was a fitting way for the title winners to put an exclamation point on their success. They have been thoroughly dominant through this term and will now seek to keep the momentum going and achieve an undefeated League One campaign. They are not only the undoubted best team in the division, they also play the best brand of football and exhibited this as they cut Montrose open at will.

The goal-fest also offers an interesting juxtaposition with the match that ultimately ended their promotion hopes last term. After falling way off Dunfermline Athletic in the title race, winning only three of their final ten league fixtures, Falkirk were humiliated in the first leg of their play-off semi-final encounter with Airdrieonians. Rhys McCabe's men were 4-0 up at the half en route to a 6-2 victory as Falkirk's defensive frailties ultimately became their undoing.

Considering the poor form in the run up to this capitulation, and that it consigned Falkirk to a fifth successive season in the third tier, it would not have been a surprise to see the board dispense with McGlynn. Managers in the SPFL have certainly been sacked for less over the past 12 months. But the decision-makers at the club kept patience, recognising the progress made under McGlynn after an embarrassing 2021-22 season in which they went through two managers (three of you include Kenny Miller's brief interim spell for the final three games) and finished a lowly sixth.

McGlynn responded by learning from the mistakes of the previous campaign. Just about every signing has been a success this term for the former Hearts and Raith Rovers boss, but there were two in particular who immediately made them stronger at both ends of the park. 

Tom Lang joined from Rovers and has been a revelation in defence. He instantly became the leader of the back-line; a calm head strong at anticipating danger and communicating with team-mates. This also brought out the best in Coll Donaldson after his tumultuous 2022-23 campaign. 

In attack, Ross MacIver was signed despite a modest goal return during his time with Alloa Athletic. He quickly displayed his undervalued qualities by becoming the team's focal point and helping knit together the array of top-quality supplementary attackers behind him: Calvin Miller was another brilliant addition on the left, while No.10 Aidan Nesbitt and talismanic winger Callumn Morrison - the leading goalscorer in the whole SPFL this season at the time of writing - were able to take their play up a level.

Hamilton Accies posed a threat for much of 2023 but as we approached the turn of the year it soon became apparent that John Rankin's men weren't equipped to keep pace with the McGlynn juggernaut, and Falkirk have enjoyed the status of champions-elect for a number of weeks now.

It brings to an end a chapter in the club's history which can only be entitled 'Falkirk - The Banter Years'. It began in their last season in the Championship when they decided to scrap the youth academy in order to hand more money to Paul Hartley in which to recruit duffers from the English non-leagues. After a Scottish Cup defeat to local rivals Stenhousemuir, they were relegated under the guidance of Ray McKinnon, who lasted only a couple of months into their first League One campaign. They may have made an immediate return, but saw their opportunity to leapfrog Raith at the top of the division taken away when Covid-19 halted the season. A co-manager team of Lee Miller and David McCracken, who replaced McKinnon, seemed to have them on the path to the title the next season, but things imploded spectacularly towards the end as they went from first to finishing outside of the play-offs.

The moment which defined the shambolic nature of the club during this period occurred three months into the 2021-22 campaign. At a tempestuous supporters' Q&A event with the board, a fan delivered a measured and impassioned plea as he sought explanation as to what was happening at his beloved team as they limped from one catastrophe to the next. The response he got from now-former chairman Gary Deans was a defensive, arms-crossed pose with the condescending reply: "That was a statement, not a question." It was all round a contemptible atmosphere, except for sporting director Gary Holt who wore a cheeky grin on his face, told a series of Dad jokes and maintained a father-of-the-bride vibe as he sat at the top table.

Paul Sheerin failed as boss, with a 6-0 defeat to Queen's Park his final game in charge, while replacement Martin Rennie didn't do any better. They spent considerable sums of money to pay the wages of Leigh Griffiths, who was only fit enough to take set-pieces and dawdle about the park as the club missed out on the top four for a second consecutive season; a bewildering feat for a full-time club in a largely part-time league.

This was all a great laugh and we considerably enjoyed poking fun at them on 'A View From The Terrace'. But eventually the joke wears a bit thin and you want a club with the history and fanbase of Falkirk to eventually stop floundering, get their act together and return to a level where they belong. They managed that this season with a team who have consistently entertained and wowed the fans. I look forward to seeing how they get on back in the Championship next term.