Gretna - Living (and dying) the Dream

[Thistle_do_nicely]

Iirc they had some bizarre reshuffle in their final season - Mick Wadsworth as a Director of Football who i'm absolutely convinced used football manager to sign players as their signings all ended up great on the game (ie a french striker, mikkael buscher who became prolific on the game after a season or two but was hopeless in real life, kyle naughton and others)

I think they were also 1-0 up against celtic  or rangees in one of their games and lost it 2-1 to two injury time goals?

I left the 3-3 against them at 3-0 down.

Fucking hated them and spent a lot of time crippling them on football manager out of spite. Probably put more effort into ruining them on save games than managing thistle tbh edit: fittingly enough my efforts to crush them with onerous contracts like giving 38 year old haddies a three year deal on £1000 a week wasnt far off what really killed them in the end

Edited November 17, 2017 by Thistle_do_nicely

[Skyline Drifter]

15 minutes ago, drs said:

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.

Maybe but nearer to their home base there wasn't much tolerance for suggestions it was unsustainable. Can only talk from experience.

The chances are there were actually less people paying the second time you went. As noted they were giving hundreds of tickets away every week in the Mileson era. Every school in Dumfries had armfuls of them.

[TonMan]

Talking about their stadium woes bring back a memory of travelling to an away Scottish Cup tie when they were playing at Fir Park (I think?) and hearing upon almost arriving at the stadium that the game had been cancelled. Thankfully thumped them 3-0 when we did end up playing them.

[Stu]

2 hours ago, Dunning1874 said:

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.

You've missed when they had to bin Alan Main because he'd signed a pre-contract with St Johnstone and they had suspicions after the Queens game he maybe wasn't giving his all. A glorious moment.

I utterly despised Gretna. It was so obvious they were flinging money at players unless you read the papers, where the fairytale pish was being peddled all the time. Mileson claiming the players weren't signing for the money but Rowan Atkinson's vision was a particular highlight. Gave me great pleasure we were the team that officially relegated them.

[Dunning1874]

13 minutes ago, Stu said:

Mileson claiming the players weren't signing for the money but Rowan Atkinson's vision was a particular highlight.

[Dunning1874]

Yeah, I did totally forget about Main though. That was an excellent state of affairs.

Apart from everything else, has there ever been a team with so many bellends involved at once? Alan Main, David Bingham, Derek Townsley, David Graham, Andy Rodgers, Chris Innes, Steve Tosh and of course James Grady all playing for one club at the same time. What an absolute gang of b*****ds.

[Replays]

David Graham’s wee cousin went to my school and I remember him chanting “Gretna, Gretna” after our 0-0 draw in the Scottish Cup despite not ever before having an interest in football. I absolutely loved it when Gretna died and, I was just 11 years old.

Our glorious 2-0 victory over then at a rain-drenched Broadwood as their cracks were starting to show was extremely pleasing.

Edited November 17, 2017 by Scott-Replay

[Stu]

5 minutes ago, Scott-Replay said:

David Graham’s wee cousin went to my school and I remember him chanting “Gretna, Gretna” after our 0-0 draw in the Scottish Cup despite not ever before having an interest in football. I absolutely loved it when Gretna died and, I was just 11 years old.

Our glorious 2-0 victory over then at a rain-drenched Broadwood as their cracks were starting to show was extremely pleasing.

Highlight of that game was the post-match fracas and the Clyde manager moaning because someone from Gretna had been making signs at the fans and they didn't want that sort of thing going on.

This was particularly funny considering the Clyde manager was Graham Roberts...

[Enigma]

Don’t know why saints fans get so raging. Didn’t exactly work out badly for them in the long run. Might have gone strait back down if they went up that season.

 

[Distant Doonhamer]

4 hours ago, Dunning1874 said:

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.

Tosh was a sub that day. Link below to the report on our archive official site and also edit to add youtube highlights of the game which capture the matchday experience well.

 I love that the first line in the report is Oh how long have we waited for this!

Living the Dream

 

 

Edited November 17, 2017 by Distant Doonhamer

[cowdenbeath]

12 minutes ago, Distant Doonhamer said:

Tosh was a sub that day. Link below to the report on our archive official site . I love that the first line in the report is Oh how long have we waited for this!

Living the dream

 

Written by our very own SD

[Miguel Sanchez]

That eco-stadium article is hilarious  

[Sergeant Wilson]

8 minutes ago, Miguel Sanchez said:

That eco-stadium article is hilarious  

Here's the final drawings.

[ICTChris]

Did Mileson go bankrupt purely from Gretna's losses or was he rooked outside of football as well?

[RandomGuy.]

Don’t know why saints fans get so raging. Didn’t exactly work out badly for them in the long run. Might have gone strait back down if they went up that season.

 

 

I doubt it, we had a superb team that season, and it's a crying shame we never saw them in the top flight. Martin Hardie and Jason Scotland at the peak of their powers, with the likes of Goran Stanic and Paul Sheerin in there two.

 

We beat Dundee United 3-0, and Rangers at Ibrox 2-0 in the League Cup. We obliterated a Falkirk side, in Falkirk, who finished 7th in the top flight, beat Motherwell and then took Celtic to extra time in the Scottish cup too.

 

I enjoyed that season, though. The second half of it, and the relentless hunting down of Gretna, is likely to be unmatched in terms of excitement over such a long period again. Hardie was absolutely possessed.

 

[jamamafegan]

22 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

 

I doubt it, we had a superb team that season, and it's a crying shame we never saw them in the top flight. Martin Hardie and Jason Scotland at the peak of their powers, with the likes of Goran Stanic and Paul Sheerin in there two.

 

We beat Dundee United 3-0, and Rangers at Ibrox 2-0 in the League Cup. We obliterated a Falkirk side, in Falkirk, who finished 7th in the top flight, beat Motherwell and then took Celtic to extra time in the Scottish cup too.

 

I enjoyed that season, though. The second half of it, and the relentless hunting down of Gretna, is likely to be unmatched in terms of excitement over such a long period again. Hardie was absolutely possessed.

 

It was a fantastic season for us. It was just a shame Gretna went and fucking ruined everything. We would have smashed the SPL had we gone up - we had some team.

[senorsoupe]

3 hours ago, drs said:

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.

Interesting that in BBC's "Scotland's Game" documentary that they did last year all the journalists featured were really quick to call out how much of a scam or ponzi scheme (even though by definition it wasn't a ponzi scheme) Gretna was yet when Mileson was pumping cash into them these journalists were awfully quiet.

[HibeeJibee]

1 hour ago, ICTChris said:

Did Mileson go bankrupt purely from Gretna's losses or was he rooked outside of football as well?

[Sergeant Wilson]

28 minutes ago, HibeeJibee said:

The llamas were probably on about £700 a week.

[nsr]

I wonder if the whole obsession with a "fairytale" comes from the tendency in British football to adopt a "Roy of the Rovers" mindset. I've heard it said that instead of improving skill and technique, eating a healthy diet, maintaining a sensible lifestyle, and all the other things you might expect from a professional athlete, British players think all that's needed is to max out on "passion" and "desire" and wait for a miracle/fairytale to sweep them to victory.