Gretna and Scotland a marriage made in hell

While each will doubtless be joyous, the occasion could hardly be happier - or more romantic - than proceedings at the football club 200 yards down the road.

Gretna, who for the past 55 years have played in England - for ten seasons in the Northern League, where their hospitality became the stuff of late night legend - have been elected at the third time of asking to the Scottish third division.

"A braw, braw day for us," says former chairman Iain Dalgleish, involved with the Dumfrieshire club since the days in 1947 when he and his mate Tommy Straiton were deputed to replace the broken down horse that pulled the roller.

"We'd one shaft each," he recalls. "The horse probably made a better job of it."

From an original seven applicants to replace Airdrieonians, bankrupt with £2m debts, the borderers won an eventual border line case 16-11 against the newly-formed Airdrie United.

"Gretna are proud to be football's ambassadors in the south but would be even prouder to be coming home after 55 years," the brochure promoting their application had claimed.

On Tuesday night there'd been a rare party - "all champagne corks and jimmy wigs," someone says. On Wednesday morning the Daily Record tried to crash it.

The Record labelled it a "Shotgun wedding", drew blunt attention to Gretna's English antecedents and low gates - in the UniBond first division last season they averaged under 100 - let loose a cantankerous columnist called John Traynor, hammer and tongs at the blacksmith's club.

"Instead of Airdrie's £6m stadium being full of hope and life, it will become a silent monument to our game's stupidity," he wrote.

"At the time that English football are saying the Old Firm can't just walk into their patch, the Scottish League give a club operating on the other side of the Wall a place at the expense of what would have been a resurrected Airdrie. God help us all."

Whatever it is that a Scotsman wears beneath his breeks, Mr Traynor has clearly got his in the most Titanic twist. No love lost there, then.

Other scions of the tartan press were little less curmudgeonly, the Scottish Daily Express wondrously suggesting that Gretna were little more than an Old Firm stalking horse.

Iain Dalgleish, 71, simply smiles - "Och, the tabloids" - pulls his (English) FA 50-year service medal from one jacket pocket and two Scotch pies from the other.

"You'll need something for the train home, ken...."

They were formed in 1946, spent a season on Mackey's Field and in the Dumfries Junior League, moved the following year to the Carlisle and District League and to Raydale Park, the present ground, cleared of stones by a group of prisoners of war awaiting repatriation.

"Good lads, those PoWs," recalls Iain, himself disorientatingly known in National Service days as Geordie.

"I didn't mind," he says, "I've always like the Geordies."

After 34 years in the Carlisle League - "if we lost more than one game a season it was a crisis" - they joined the newly-formed Northern League second division in 1982, promoted behind Peterlee in their first season.

They became the first Scottish club in 105 years to reach the FA Cup first round, took Rochdale to a replay and lost 3-2 to Bolton two years later, visited Bangor in the only FA Cup tie between Welsh and Scottish clubs.

"A long and often victorious campaign of border raids," says the brochure, and in 1992 they were promoted to the Unibond League.

"I ate, drank and slept the Northern League, but all the English clubs have been very good to us," says Iain, seated in what the brochure calls the hospitality suite but what to the former chairman will always be the Black Hut.

The Black Hut became a place of much merriment, of haggis and of Highland firewater, a lasting memorial to Scottish hospitality and cross-border alliance.

Unfortunately, however, there were sometimes almost as many in the Black Hut as there were on the terraces - testament to the difficulty of selling English football to a town of 3,000 Scottish souls.

The ground has a 2,200 capacity, 600 seats - about to rise to 1,000 - and four turnstiles to accommodate the rush. They hope that gates will quadruple in the Scottish League.

Football has principally been kept alive, however, by the Sunday morning markets in the car park behind the top goal, generating an estimated club income of £115,000 annually.

"People here talk about us enough," says the former chairman, whose idea the market was. "I just wish they'd put their shoes on and watch us."

Despite its amorous associations, the Scottish League's newest outpost remains a prosaic community, however. In Victory Avenue, on the way from the single platform railway station, there is no sign of the previous day's tumultuous events, simply a single, small flag of St George in a large and courageous window.

In the window of the Gretna Bakery, however (purveyors of Scotch pies to Mr Dalgleish) a notice already announces the opening Scottish League fixture, at home to Morton - the once mighty Morton - on August 3.

Rowan Alexander, Gretna's manager for 18 months, is a former Morton striker and Queen of the South team boss. "Things have become a lot more professional since he came," says assistant secretary Helen McGregor, left-back in the Hatton Wizards ladies team of the 1950s and for 20 years a Liverpool season ticket holder.

Helen has a shopping bag. The shopping bag clinks.

Gretna's ambition, she says unequivocally, is to do a Livingstone, though they'll need to set out an awful lot of Sunday market stalls for that.

Club officials had personally lobbied all 27 Scottish League clubs, given them a brochure and a video, talked Gretna's case for returning where they belonged.

"It was definitely our best presentation," says Helen. "I thought it was too close to call, but I was definitely a bit worried about the new Airdrie.

"People will still say that we're a club which has come from England, but they only need look at a map. We simply honed our skills there; I hope we'll be out of the third division within two years."

Peterhead is five hours away; Elgin City six. "It took us five hours to get to Matlock in the UniBond," says club treasurer Alan Dalrymple, in the manner of a man who's personally paid the coach bill.

Another television crew has arrived, a committee man on his bike and a smart suited rep trying to sell them kiddies' games. "I read you were a family club," he says.

Iain Dalgleish, one horse power, rises from the bench in the Black Hut, lifts the seat and produces a bottle of wine laid down to mark the club's 50th anniversary in 1996.

"It'll help wash down the pies. Haste ye back," he says.

We shall be back, for certain, on Saturday August 3 - the all-ticket day when a fairy tale romance has a truly happy ending.

The Daily Record, incidentally, also reported on Wednesday that teams of robot footballers - representing England and Brazil and operated by children - had met at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh.

Brazil won 8-2 - "a result," added the Record, "that most of Scotland would like to see repeated." Something seems to be rattling the Jocks.

No "World's best dad" socks for Colin Randall on Father's Day. Instead his younger daughter gave him a book of black and white pictures called "Football: the Golden Age" in which he discovers the remarkable fact that in 1910 the Barnsley FC mascot was a donkey called Amos.

"It may still be for all I know," adds Colin - Shildon lad and Sunderland fan - his e-mail mischievously headed "Re. Tony Adam s."

Barnsley's greatest claim to fame had previously been Skinner Normanton, known to his mother as Sidney, who made 123 Football League appearances after the war, scored just twice but was immortalised by Mr Michael Parkinson for an approach best described as uncompromising.

What is less widely known is that in 1973 there was a donkey on Scarborough beach which also answered to Amos - possibly, depending on donkey life expectancy - the ass from Oakwell.

The photo library even has a shot taken with it. Yer man is the one in the glasses.

First with the news maybe, but these newspaper owned horses tend to be a bit tardy around a racecourse.

After Northern Echo's well-chronicled disappointments, Evening Press - owned for a year by a syndicate representing our sister paper in York - made its long awaited debut at Thirsk on Tuesday. It was last by 14 lengths. "At least," whispers an unkind Evening Pressman, "ours is still alive."

Though the Daily Telegraph considered it a "prep school error", the catch denied Matthew Hoggard at Old Trafford on Monday - no-balled because "no more than two" fielders are allowed behind square on the leg side - contravened a law little known by non-combatants.

John Briggs in Darlington remembers it well, however.

John was with Cockerton CC, in Darlington, when they were asked to take on a youth club side - who turned up with 22 players, all keen to be part of it.

Cockerton agreed, expecting all the lads to have a bit of a bit, but were taken aback when they all came out to field.

Though the letter of the law might already have been italicised, the umpires did nowt until the first ball - promptly called from square leg.

Immediately the officious official quoted Law 41:5 - no more than two fielders behind square. "You lot," he said, "have six."

Tuesday's poser over whether the unfortunate Tommy Sorenson was the first Sunderland player to score in the World Cup finals - should the Press Association's indictment be upheld by FIFA - has further been complicated.

McAteer scored for Ireland en route to the Far East, of course, as - "possibly" says Colin Randall - did Quinn and Kilbane ("despite his passable imitation of someone who has never previously kicked a ball.")

But what of Patrick Mboma, who scored for Cameroon against Ireland?

"Perhaps still technically a Sunderland player, the loan period having expired but Reid still to pronounce on tasking up the purchase option."

AND FINALLY

FIFA can have that one, an' all.

The Football League club with a ball and a book on its badge (Backtrack, June 18) is Cambridge United.

Today back across to Gretna: readers are invited to name the former Newcastle United player who became one of the Scots' most successful managers.

Published: 21/06/2002