Falkirk to begin next football season at home to St Mirren

Kick-off against the Paisley outfit – tenth-placed finishers in last season’s pre-split top-flight table on 30 points from 33 fixtures, four places and 16 points worse off than their upcoming hosts – is at 3pm and it will be screened live on Sky Sports, along with the rest of that afternoon’s fixture card.

It’s the second season in a row that manager John McGlynn’s Bairns have got to begin on home turf, having started off with a 2-2 draw hosting Dundee United last time round, and they’ll be hoping not to pick up where they left off, having ended last term’s post-split group stage with three defeats on the bounce in May – by 5-2 and 3-1 hosting Rangers and Hibernian respectively and 3-0 away to Heart of Midlothian.

They’ll also be wanting to avoid a re-run of last season’s corresponding fixtures versus St Mirren, having lost 2-1 at home to them twice, in March and September, though they did beat them 2-0 on the road in between in January.

Their scorers against the Renfrewshire club were the now-departed Barney Stewart in March, with Miguel Freckleton and Liam Donnelly netting the other way; Finn Yeats and Calvin Miller in January; and Brian Graham last September, with Declan John and Mikael Mandron on target at the other end of the pitch.

They then play all of last term’s top-four teams, both pre- and post-split, one after the other, beginning with Motherwell away on Saturday, August 8.

They host Hearts at the Falkirk Stadium on Saturday, August 22, before heading to Glasgow to play champions Celtic seven days later and hosting fellow Glaswegians Rangers on Wednesday, September 2.

That visit from the Old Firm outfit is one of three games in September, the others, both Saturday away-days, being against Dundee United on the 5th and newly-promoted St Johnstone on the 19th.

December will be their busiest month in the league, with half a dozen fixtures lined up.

They’re at home to Motherwell on Wednesday the 2nd, Aberdeen on Saturday the 12th and Dundee United on Boxing Day, also a Saturday, and away to Dundee on Saturday the 5th, St Mirren on Saturday the 19th and Kilmarnock on Wednesday the 30th.

They begin 2027 at home to Hibs on Saturday, January 2, and that’s one of four games that month, all on Saturdays too, the others being away to St Johnstone seven days later, hosting Hearts on the 23rd and away to Celtic on the 30th.

Their last pre-split fixture is the same as their first, at home to St Mirren, and that’s on Saturday, April 10, with their league season being scheduled to wrap up in mid-May.

A full list of Falkirk’s fixtures can be found on their Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/falkirkfootballclub