How tiny Gretna went from obscurity to the Scottish Cup final and European football… and why no love lingers for their footballing fairytale in the town that once lived the dream

Scottish football doesn’t normally need an excuse to kick back and reminisce.

Up and down the land, there are more dinners commemorating notable achievements than you can shake a stick at. Who says nostalgia isn’t what it used to be?

In one famous corner of the country, though, there doesn’t appear to be any appetite for raising a glass to a storied occasion from yesteryear.

Twenty years on from becoming the first third tier club in history to reach the Scottish Cup final, Gretna’s class of 2006 won’t need to clear their diaries come May.

There is no desire within the Galloway town to recall the palpable sense of pride that washed over it when their side took Hearts all the way to penalties. The fall which came after was just too hard.

How telling it is that the club which now plays out of Raydale Park has no interest in conflating the present with the past.

‘Some consider it to be the restoration of the Gretna FC which lasted from 1946 until 2008,’ reads the Gretna Supporters’ Society website. ‘But Gretna 2008 tries to keep its image separated from the preceding bankrupted club.’

This point is underscored on the official home page of the current entity in a way that makes a none-too-subtle barb at the rubble from which it emerged.

‘Gretna 2008 aspires to compete at the highest level of Scottish football while operating a sustainable football club embedded in the heart of the community,’ it states.

In a place famous for allowing eloping couples from England to marry, there is a clear sense of regret about how their football club’s dalliance with the big time ended.

You can hardly blame the townsfolk from being swept off their feet when a mysterious stranger first entered their midst.

Raised in a council estate in Sunderland, Brooks Mileson defied the doctors who told him he’d never walk again when he broke his back in a quarry accident aged 11.

He took up cross-country running and won a bronze medal in the English championships in 1967. And having proved his point, he hung up his spikes.

This determination to succeed was manifest in his working life. After being made redundant in the construction industry in the early 80s, he formed his own building firm before branching into insurance.

On the way to amassing a personal fortune estimated to be around £75million, his philanthropic nature saw him donate money to numerous supporters’ trusts in non-league football. His love of the game could not be questioned.

Having been rebuffed in his attempt to buy a controlling interest in Carlisle, Mileson looked around for another opportunity.

Since 1947, Gretna had played in amateur and semi-pro leagues across the border in England.

Successive failures to be voted into the Scottish leagues in 1993 and 1999 didn’t deter them from trying again when Airdrieonians went to the wall in 2002. Third time was to prove a charm.

Soon after, Mileson took over. After two years treading water in the lower tier, he opened his cheque book.

Established players of the ilk of Alan Main, Derek Townsley, David Bingham and Gavin Skelton were lured from Premiership clubs to the bottom rung of the ladder for jaw-dropping salaries.

Kenny Deuchar, a trained medic, arrived from East Fife and began scoring so regularly that Sky Sports’ Jeff Stelling promptly renamed him Dr Goals.

Never short of a line for the growing press pack on those days, Mileson promised that anyone scoring a hat-trick could have his Aston Martin for a week. In his first season, Deuchar hit six of them.

It summed up the club at that point — lots of gimmicks and gags and seemingly no shortage of cash.

Long-suffering Gretna fans felt like their club had won the lottery. To an extent, it had. And for as long as a wealthy man was prepared to continue to pump his own money in, where was the harm in it?

Having romped to the bottom-tier title in 2005, winning their last 14 matches, Mileson doubled down. Steve Tosh arrived from Aberdeen while James Grady came from Dundee United.

Yet when the star-studded team walked out to face Forfar Athletic on the opening day of the season, there were just 1,173 souls to watch them.

The pony-tailed Mileson eschewed the directors’ box and stood behind the goal munching a fish supper.

Wearing a shabby blazer, a shirt and jeans from Asda which he claimed cost him a fiver, he chain-smoked his way through another romp to the title which saw Morton finish a distant 18 points behind his side.

They beat Preston Athletic, Cove Rangers, St Johnstone, Clyde (after a replay) and St Mirren to reach the Scottish Cup semi-final with then Championship side Dundee.

With Hearts securing second spot in the Premiership, Gretna were guaranteed European football regardless of how the final unfolded.

It was a good story which captured the imagination. But a football fairy-tale, as some had it? Only if you believe that there’s something magical about throwing vast sums of money at a project.

Gretna didn’t like that many were questioning if their rapid ascent in the game was quite as wondrous as they claimed it to be.

Anyone in the media holding a microscope to the impact of Brooks’ millions was given short shrift.

‘It’s all down to hard work and dedication,’ said then manager Rowan Alexander. ‘We don’t talk about things here, we do it. Nothing negative, everything is positive.

‘Every club should have ambitions and strive to better themselves. There are plenty of opportunities out there. When people work as a collective unit, those chances come and that’s all we’ve done.’

This was, of course, rubbish. It wasn’t Gretna’s work ethic which had brought a string of household names to their door. It was the ludicrous sums of money they were prepared to pay.

While a self-made man like Mileson was entitled to spend his fortune in any way he pleased, it insulted the intelligence of fans of rival clubs to suggest it was only one factor in Gretna’s meteoric rise.

The level of resentment only grew as the club strengthened again in preparation for the Championship. Martin Canning, Colin McMenamin, John O’Neil and Neil MacFarlane came in.

The club’s maiden European voyage was short-lived when they were thumped by Derry City but they were still on course for a third successive promotion as the home straight approached.

With Alexander by then absent with a ‘stress-related illness’ and former player Davie Irons in charge, Gretna travelled to Ross County needing a win on the final day to go up.

Victors by 4-3 at Hamilton, the players and staff of St Johnstone were huddled around a radio when they heard that Grady has scored a 90th-minute the winner in a delayed game in Dingwall to break their hearts.

An increasingly sickly figure, Mileson had defied doctor’s orders to travel to the match. ‘I’m absolutely exhausted,’ he said. ‘The last 10 minutes I could hardly stand up.

‘The legs had gone and everything had gone. When that goal went in, I thought I was going to fall over.

‘We do everything the hard way. Everything.’

By that stage, though, the plucky underdog spiel was starting to wear thin.

With Raydale Park not up to standard, Gretna’s one-and-only top-flight campaign began at their adopted home of Fir Park — 75 miles north up the M74 — against Falkirk in front of 2,731. It would end in embarrassment.

The fact that Irons largely went with the same squad which had won the Championship led many to question if Mileson was starting to back out. This was strongly refuted yet the edifice was starting to crumble.

The truth emerged on February 18 when Irons and assistant Derek Collins quit for Morton after the squad’s wages hadn’t been paid. Director of football Mick Wadsworth, a former lieutenant of Bobby Robson, took charge.

‘I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a concern,’ Irons said.

Mileson’s declining health was also now an issue. He hadn’t been seen at a game in months with rumours abounding that he was in hospital.

Those who had warned of the danger of a club being solely dependent on the largesse of one individual began to fear the worst.

On March 3, the club formally entered administration and were automatically deducted 10 points. Two weeks later, 22 employees, including eight first-team players, were made redundant.

Officially relegated on March 29, just 431 were present to see them play Inverness on April 5.

The full horror show was soon laid bare by the administrator. Under Mileson, Gretna had racked up debts of £4m — £600,000 of which was to HMRC.

The SPL stepped in and paid the wages of those players who remained to ensure they fulfilled their remaining fixtures.

With no buyer, everyone who’d survived to that point was made redundant on May 17.

Gretna were relegated to the fourth tier 12 days later. After being threatened with expulsion, the club resigned its place in the league on June 3 before liquidation on August 8.

The broadcaster and St Johnstone fan Stuart Cosgrove probably put it best.

‘It was a Ponzi scheme predicated by an ego-driven fantasy… and you’ve got clowns and idiots calling it a fairytale,’ he stated.

Mileson, a man who promised the earth in those early days, never did explain why he chose to tighten the purse strings exactly when he did or if he genuinely believed that a team from a town with a population with 2,705 people could ever become sustainable.

He died of a heart attack aged 60 that November after falling into his garden pond at his Carlisle home.

Almost 20 years on from those two trips to Hampden, some Gretna fans of that era will no doubt still be thankful that his millions took them on such a ride.

Given the consequence of his untrammelled recklessness was a one-way ticket to oblivion, most will rue the day when he darkened their door.