Gretna - Living (and dying) the Dream

[Skyline Drifter]

16 minutes ago, DA Baracus said:

From what I remember plenty of folk happily bought in to the 'fairytale' narrative.

 

12 minutes ago, Sergeant Wilson said:

No-one with any sense did.

 

8 minutes ago, nsr said:

I suppose it would be attractive to those who think a football club's strategy should be to spend money in an unsustainable manner  in the pursuit of short-term success and bragging rights, and who think that clubs who don't do this are unambitious wasters.

This. It's revisionism to suggest everybody could see through it from the word go. Pretty much everyone signed up to the fairytale to begin with and questions only started being raised when Mileson's behaviour became increasingly erratic and his appearances became less frequent. Around about the halfway stage in their last promotion campaign. I know it was said in jest earlier in the thread but the idea that Gretna breezed through three seasons of promotion is misplaced. They breezed through two and a half seasons (though unlike Rangers didn't have clubs the size of Hearts and Hibs to contend with). Their second half of the last promotion season though was awful and I think they won only 2 or 3 games. They fell over the line with a last gasp win over a relegated Ross County having all but blown a lead well into double figures of points.

Dumfries was absolutely full of people taking about what a breath of fresh air Gretna was an how brilliant everything was. I appreciate we were somewhat nearer the epicentre of the thing and maybe nobody mentioned it across the Central Belt (though it got plenty of press coverage) but there was a time when QoS fans were very much swimming against the tide locally and any words of warning were absolutely taken as bitterness without foundation. To be fair there was a lot of similar accusations flying about when Dundee fans were later warned about the similarities of Calum Melville.

8 minutes ago, Sergeant Wilson said:

Muir should have been jailed.

Graeme Muir was a fish out of water in that role to be fair. I know him well and he's a terrific youth football coach. He went back to doing that and he's doing a great job running Greystone Rovers amongst other things. But like a lot of people who helped out at Gretna he ended up in a role he wasn't ideal for and in no real position to question the sustainability of the funding.

[djchapsticks]

I remember bouncing about the Bankhouse in Paisley, delighted when Hearts won the cup only to be told that I was a p***k for celebrating the underdog not having their day.

[TonMan]

3 minutes ago, Skyline Drifter said:

 

 

This. It's revisionism to suggest everybody could see through it from the word go. Pretty much everyone signed up to the fairytale to begin with and questions only started being raised when Mileson's behaviour became increasingly erratic and his appearances became less frequent. Around about the halfway stage in their last promotion campaign. I know it was said in jest earlier in the thread but the idea that Gretna breezed through three seasons of promotion is misplaced. They breezed through two and a half seasons (though unlike Rangers didn't have clubs the size of Hearts and Hibs to contend with). Their second half of the last promotion season though was awful and I think they won only 2 or 3 games. They fell over the line with a last gasp win over a relegated Ross County having all but blown a lead well into double figures of points.

Also worth noting that they managed to win it with 66 points in the end, a total that'd generally not be enough to see you go up. Even their first half of the 06-07 season was patchy, with a 4-0 defeat at home to Dundee and a run in which they only won one of seven games. Ultimately a few bouts of excellent form were enough to see them through.

[Glenconner]

On 16 November 2017 at 13:20, Dunning1874 said:

At some point someone is going to enter this thread and say it was a shame because they only went under due to Mileson's health deteriorating. This is untrue: they stopped paying bills long before he was permanently hospitalised and were liquidated months before he finally passed away.

Didn't his family get him sectioned near the end and grab the money

Edited November 17, 2017 by Glenconner

[Sergeant Wilson]

19 minutes ago, Skyline Drifter said:

 

 

This. It's revisionism to suggest everybody could see through it from the word go. Pretty much everyone signed up to the fairytale to begin with and questions only started being raised when Mileson's behaviour became increasingly erratic and his appearances became less frequent. Around about the halfway stage in their last promotion campaign. I know it was said in jest earlier in the thread but the idea that Gretna breezed through three seasons of promotion is misplaced. They breezed through two and a half seasons (though unlike Rangers didn't have clubs the size of Hearts and Hibs to contend with). Their second half of the last promotion season though was awful and I think they won only 2 or 3 games. They fell over the line with a last gasp win over a relegated Ross County having all but blown a lead well into double figures of points.

Dumfries was absolutely full of people taking about what a breath of fresh air Gretna was an how brilliant everything was. I appreciate we were somewhat nearer the epicentre of the thing and maybe nobody mentioned it across the Central Belt (though it got plenty of press coverage) but there was a time when QoS fans were very much swimming against the tide locally and any words of warning were absolutely taken as bitterness without foundation. To be fair there was a lot of similar accusations flying about when Dundee fans were later warned about the similarities of Calum Melville.

Graeme Muir was a fish out of water in that role to be fair. I know him well and he's a terrific youth football coach. He went back to doing that and he's doing a great job running Greystone Rovers amongst other things. But like a lot of people who helped out at Gretna he ended up in a role he wasn't ideal for and in no real position to question the sustainability of the funding.

Muir continued to peddle rubbish like stadium plans in the full knowledge that day to day bills weren't being paid. I know the physio had to change supplier several times as his bills for equipment weren't being paid. The sustainability would have been obvious to anyone.

[Glenconner]

On 16 November 2017 at 10:34, RiG said:

I still remember that pretty awful poster on here, gretna_ed, who always refuted that things would come crashing down and that they were a completely artificial club kept alive by the ridiculous money being pumped into them. Once it did all fall apart he slithered away from the forum never to be seen again.

Wonder if he posts here under another name?

[Dunning1874]

3 hours ago, invergowrie arab said:

I have never fully understood the St Johnstone/ Cosgrove hatred of them regarding financial doping. Was it that someone pumped more money in than what they could ever bring in, as that is 90% of professional football teams, or was it by that stage people already knew the money wasn't getting pumped in?

It was the scale of the financial doping that made it so ridiculous even compared to other clubs overspending. They had the sixth largest budget in the country when they were in the Third Division playing in front of crowds around the 700 mark. Stevie Tosh was a first team regular at Aberdeen and left for Gretna because they could pay him more money, it was absolutely insane.

It was also apparent in January of the season they won the First Division ahead of St Johnstone that the wheels were coming off. They started cutting back the wage bill then with Tosh, Neil McFarlane, Jamie McQuilken and Derek Townsley being moved on, players who were still first team regulars. That coincided with their form starting to collapse. They lost to St. Johnstone at the end of January and that was the start of a five game run where they lost three.

After that third defeat, a 3-0 pumping by a Queen of the South team containing Tosh and McQuilken, Rowan Alexander was given a leave of absence, ostensibly to give him time to recover from an illness which wasn't made public. Davie Irons took over for the remaining eight games and while there was a received wisdom at the time that he only hastened collapse in form, in reality he actually stopped the rot. They only won three of those last eight, but they only lost one of them - Irons dragging out draws where Alexander had been losing was what got them to the title in the end.

That set up the bizarre events of the first day of the following season when Alexander, still supposedly on a leave of absence, turned up at Fir Park to take the team and was refused entry. Irons continued to take the team while Alexander said he'd never been ill at all. We still don't have a fucking clue what was actually going on there, but Alexander never spoke to Mileson or Irons again. In any case, as we all know their squad was woefully out of their depth at that level, because they had no money that summer to bring in players who were close to being good enough.

Of course, while they were groundsharing at Fir Park they were supposed to be turning Raydale Park into a 6000 all-seater, but not a bit of work was done, which you'd think would have set alarm bells ringing. When they finally went into administration in March 2008 we were told that this was due to Mileson's ill-health and his inability to continue funding them as a result: it turned out that they'd actually stopped paying their taxes months before and had run up a £600K debt to HMRC, among a total debt of £4M. There was no money left because it was a completely unsustainable mess and rather than being forced by his health, Mileson's decision to stop funding them was a business decision. It was an attempt to stop wasting money before he'd blown the entirety of his childrens' inheritance and he made it far too late. When he died three months after Gretna were liquidated he was bankrupt having gone into millions of debt personally, on top of the debts the club ran up.

[gannonball]

I can remember playing them at Almondvale as Motherwells pitch had tuned in to a farmers field, that was always going to happen as Motherwells pitch  was shit enough with a team playing on it every second week. Fair play to them now though as past few times I have been it has looked decent. Anyway I can vaguely remember the tickets still being for Fir park so nobody knew which stand to go to etc.

 

[John MacLean]

I first went down to Raydale Park for a pre-season friendly against Thistle when Gretna were still kicking about in the Northern Premier League. It was a nice night and they struck me as a pleasant enough club. So much so that I was pleased when they were admitted to the SFL at the expense of a reformed Airdrie and for a few years they did next to nothing in the bottom league and scarcely registered with me. 

As others have said there subsequently rise up the leagues was totally unsustainable and even if they hadn't run up mountains of debt in the process they may well have lost their SFA (?) status anyway. They were still Associate rather than Full members of the SFA at the time and it was far from guaranteed that they would be given Full membership status not least because of the state of their ground. It was an accident waiting to happen. 

We played them down their when they opened that prefabricated stand behind the goal (bought from the R&A and previously used at The Open I think). There was quite a drop at the back of it and the back few rows were taped off to prevent people using those rows. We took a big support that day and as the stand filled up all of a sudden the taped off section was suddenly declared safe (Hearts are looking for the individual who did so right now) and the tape was removed. Unsafe one moment and then safe to use the very next. 

That might have been the same day that Thistle fans pointed out that the fire exit in the wee terracing along the side of the pitch was actually padlocked closed. 

There were stories too of the gates being opened when a big crowd was in and admission money simply dropped into a bucket rather than handed over at a turnstyle where presumably there would have been some idea when the ground was full or near to full. 

[young_bairn]

Hated them at the time like most on here. Also hated all the 'Good Doctor' media banter around Kenny Deucher.

Thinking back it was some good trolling from Mileson.  Had the majority of Scottish Football fans seething.

[harry94]

1 hour ago, Skyline Drifter said:

 

 

This. It's revisionism to suggest everybody could see through it from the word go. Pretty much everyone signed up to the fairytale to begin with and questions only started being raised when Mileson's behaviour became increasingly erratic and his appearances became less frequent. Around about the halfway stage in their last promotion campaign. I know it was said in jest earlier in the thread but the idea that Gretna breezed through three seasons of promotion is misplaced. They breezed through two and a half seasons (though unlike Rangers didn't have clubs the size of Hearts and Hibs to contend with). Their second half of the last promotion season though was awful and I think they won only 2 or 3 games. They fell over the line with a last gasp win over a relegated Ross County having all but blown a lead well into double figures of points.

Dumfries was absolutely full of people taking about what a breath of fresh air Gretna was an how brilliant everything was. I appreciate we were somewhat nearer the epicentre of the thing and maybe nobody mentioned it across the Central Belt (though it got plenty of press coverage) but there was a time when QoS fans were very much swimming against the tide locally and any words of warning were absolutely taken as bitterness without foundation. To be fair there was a lot of similar accusations flying about when Dundee fans were later warned about the similarities of Calum Melville.

Graeme Muir was a fish out of water in that role to be fair. I know him well and he's a terrific youth football coach. He went back to doing that and he's doing a great job running Greystone Rovers amongst other things. But like a lot of people who helped out at Gretna he ended up in a role he wasn't ideal for and in no real position to question the sustainability of the funding.

Was there not a moment in January when they offloaded a few players to get the wage bill down? If I remember correctly, things started to kind of fall apart in the promotion season and there were all sorts of rumours of things going on.

Interesting parallel to Melville at Dundee. At the time, we were in a really dreadful state from admin 1 and the club couldn't exactly organise a raffle. He arrived and pretty much promised a plan which would have developed the infrastructure of the club but that led to it being blown at the first time football had a different idea and throwing money at a team doesn't always equate to success. At the time, he put himself in the public eye and made a very big effort to endear himself to the support (sitting in the stands with fans and speaking regularly on a few occasions). The guy seems to really have some sort of personality disorder now when you get news about him every so often and you can really see that there was that level of narcissism there (apparently he'd regularly quit the club and run away on a weekly basis).

What was quite interesting with our scenario is that when it become clear that there were structural problems, it was kind of sorted out (well not totally fixed but it was survivable without administration). The tax bill was the debt that had pressured us but the HMRC had made an arrangement with the club and were giving the wiggle room to do something about it after our initial non payment. After their efforts, we then put in a bid for Bob Harris (maybe Paul Burns from you guys too but can't quite remember) very publicly to maybe assure the fans that the money was still there and we were safe but this just pissed off the HMRC who had felt mislead.

I think in retrospect, the tax bill may have been quite a good thing for the club long-term. If the situation was allowed to go on for longer, the danger would have been much more apparent.

[Waspie]

1 hour ago, Skyline Drifter said:

 I appreciate we were somewhat nearer the epicentre of the thing and maybe nobody mentioned it across the Central Belt (though it got plenty of press coverage) but there was a time when QoS fans were very much swimming against the tide locally and any words of warning were absolutely taken as bitterness without foundation.

Aye, lots of idiots praised Gretna for "showing ambition".

The living the dream thing was clearly absolute nonsense. The sad thing was that it started out as not much more than a village team after WW2 and progressed to a decent level in English non league football and to playing in the FA Cup, before getting into the SFL.  Achieved over 50 odd years and with hard work. That was living the dream. Mileson made the club a laughing stock before they got liquidated and when the new team started off they couldn't even play in Gretna intially. He pissed all over the dream really.

Edited November 17, 2017 by Waspie

[Sergeant Wilson]

7 minutes ago, young_bairn said:

Hated them at the time like most on here. Also hated all the 'Good Doctor' media banter around Kenny Deucher.

Thinking back it was some good trolling from Mileson.  Had the majority of Scottish Football fans seething.

That's revisionism. Trolling would suggest that the impact on other clubs was being considered, even in the negative. There was no planning or structure, they just stumbled from one scenario to the next throwing money everywhere but where it should have gone.

[Glenconner]

Is there still a team called Gretna?

[ICTChris]

3 minutes ago, Glenconner said:

Is there still a team called Gretna?

Gretna 2008 play in the South of Scotland league, I think.

[cowdenbeath]

2 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

Gretna 2008 play in the South of Scotland league, I think.

Lowland League.

Another here who hated all that living the dream pish. I remember someone telling me pre Mileston days Gretna were a decent wee non league side who were well respected in the Northern League back in the day.

Would have liked to have seen them then or in their first SFL season before the circus arrived in the village. We 1st played them in the 2nd season the 1st that Mileston was there was quite funny when Stranraer and Stirling pipped them for promotion

I remember the 1st game at Central Park all their team arrived in matching designer suits looked a right bunch of tossers and David Holdsworth arrived in an airport taxi having flown up from Essex.

[Sergeant Wilson]

Just now, cowdenbeath said:

Lowland League.

Another here who hated all that living the dream pish. I remember someone telling me pre Mileston days Gretna were a decent wee non league side who were well respected in the Northern League back in the day.

Would have liked to have seen them then or in their first SFL season before the circus arrived in the village. We 1st played them in the 2nd season the 1st that Mileston was there was quite funny when Stranraer and Stirling pipped them for promotion

I remember the 1st game at Central Park all their team arrived in matching designer suits looked a right bunch of tossers and David Holdsworth arrived in an airport taxi having flown up from Essex.

A crowd of them turned up in Airdrie for a midweek game in a fleet of Jeep Cherokees. They swooped in, in convoy. I expected The President to jump out. Mileson was in possession of fewer marbles by then and was to ill to sit outside. This was early in 2006/7 season, I don't know who was pulling the strings then, but it wasn’t him.

[Johnstoun]

He never used his own money, and likely didn't have any during the entire Gretna fiasco. He'd secured a £5 million credit facility David Murray fashion, it expired at the time of the 'cost cutting'.

[Dunning1874]

52 minutes ago, John MacLean said:

We played them down their when they opened that prefabricated stand behind the goal (bought from the R&A and previously used at The Open I think). There was quite a drop at the back of it and the back few rows were taped off to prevent people using those rows. We took a big support that day and as the stand filled up all of a sudden the taped off section was suddenly declared safe (Hearts are looking for the individual who did so right now) and the tape was removed. Unsafe one moment and then safe to use the very next. 

You could feel that stand shaking as well. Chris Millar scored twice in three minutes to put us 2-0 up down there and there were tremendous scenes when the second went in, but you could genuinely feel the wobble when everyone jumped out of their seats. They'd added a back and a roof to it by then but it still felt dodgy as f**k.

[drs]

2 hours ago, Skyline Drifter said:

This. It's revisionism to suggest everybody could see through it from the word go. Pretty much everyone signed up to the fairytale to begin with

And that's not true - most, if not all, fans in the bottom two divisions were saying it was unsustainable from the beginning but were ignored as being bitter or jealous. It was a media created myth about a fairytale, Christ the only person I can remember in the media at the time calling them out was Chic Young but as Chic is an idiot he was ignored.

I went to Raydale twice, once in their first season in the league and there was about 500 people there, a couple of seasons later and they were romping the league and had a side that wouldn't have been out of place in the now Championship and the crowd was only about 550 - now you can say well that's a 10% increase in people and yes it is but its nowhere near enough to cover the additional money they were paying out.

They famously turned up to one away game with 3 paying fans - one of whom was the team bus driver. Milleson ruined them and anyone who says they didn't see the end coming from the very beginning clearly wasn't paying attention.