By Ben Kearney

Copyright falkirkherald

Having brought the Bairns back from the brink – John McGlynn would love to see Falkirk fans filling the ‘Grangemouth Gap’ with the club boasting record numbers season-ticket holders. The Bairns’ board of directors last week confirmed that plans for a fourth stand are still in the pipeline, with the newly-promoted Scottish Premiership side an ‘increasingly attractive proposition’ to investors. Manager McGlynn knows that there is still work to do – but he is hoping that a fourth stand can be introduced with club flourishing in the top flight. And being there would allow the club to coin in from the likes of the Old Firm and the Edinburgh clubs when they come to visit. He said: “A fourth stand would be great. We’re selling out because we’ve sold 5700 season tickets and so there’s a very small allocation of away fans. Now of course if we can fill that with Falkirk fans then great. But where we’re missing out right now is the fact that Livingston for example can fill three ends with Old Firm fans, that’s a lot of money. So we’re kind of missing out on that. “It’s brilliant that we’ve got 5700 season ticket holders, of course it is, and if we can get 10,000 season ticket holders in then good and well. But whereas other teams are kind of like benefiting from having bigger stadiums and being able to fill them – not all the time but for key games – then obviously that brings in a lot of money which we’re missing out on a little bit by not having that stand. “It’ll have to work out financially for the football club to do something like that, they would have to have a long-term plan. We are fan owned, we’ve not got any big owners who can just go and throw two or three million or whatever it would take… I mean, how many millions would it take to put a stand in there, put a grass pitch in. With the money that we’ve got, I don’t think that’s doable and trying to keep something on the pitch that would keep us in the league. Obviously it’s above me but it’s not easy.” The boss also says that the onus is one him and the management team to keep bums on seats – with the football on offer key to the returning Falkirk fans after years in the Scottish League One wilderness. He added: “We’re all in it together. I’m football, I’m going to tell you that it’s all because of the product on the pitch out there because without that they’re not coming in, they weren’t coming in here three years ago because the product wasn’t right. It’s what happens out on that pitch that brings people through the door and they’ll buy programmes and pies and jerseys. It’s amazing what the fans have done with regards to backing us and having 5700 season ticket holders… but if the product was rubbish, they wouldn’t be there.”