A marriage made in Hampden

On one side there's a sort of nesting box for dog-ends, a necessity of Scotland's six-day old smoking legislation. On the other there's a drum for waste paper.

In his hand - inevitably, incorrigibly - there's a cigarette. "It's been bedlam. I'm so brain dead after all that's been going on here this week that I've set light to the bin three times already," says the owner, inspiration and enthusiastic odd-job man of Gretna Football Club.

Out the back they're packing the cliches with the kit bags. Tomorrow there'll be romance, love stories, teams going hammer and tongs, maybe even a runaway victory.

Further to traduce the Queen's English is nonetheless irresistible. Brooks Mileson is not just unique, he is utterly and incomparably unique.

As paradoxically befits a town where every day is wedding day, Gretna is a dour and passionless old place, for all that.

Opposite the world's most famous register office, the little arcade of photographers, florists and wedding cake sellers pays but perfunctory attention to the story spreading far beyond the pages of the Annandale Observer.

In the baker's, there's a wedding cake decorated with GFC in Jelly-tots. Above it, a much larger sign says "Say aye, tak (sic) a pie."

Though Rabbie Burns was briefly an exciseman thereabouts, the township grew up around a First World War munitions factory, a population of 30,000 of whom 500 (says the official history) were pollisses. The Scots liked their bevy, even then.

The 2001 census put the diminished population at 2,705, of whom approximately 100 - and sometimes many fewer - watched the town's football team in 1991 and 1992 when, against the likes of Horden, Hebburn and Billingham Synthonia, they won the Northern League in successive seasons.

Promoted to the Unibond League, the crowds little greater, they continued in English football until 2002 when, third time of asking, the door to the Scottish third division - in reality the fourth - at last inched open. They were still first footing, still finding their feet, when multi-millionaire Mileson happened by.

If Gretna hadn't much of a team, then Brooks Mileson had absolutely no side. It was a marriage made in . . . well you know the rest, anyway.

One of a family of seven from a two-bedroom council house on the Pennywell estate in Sunderland, he was 11 when the side of a sand quarry fell in on him, breaking his back. The doctors said he'd never walk again.

Eight years later he was British junior cross country champion, helped the team to relay gold in the world event, trained as an accountant. In the 1980s he bought Arnott Insurance.

Now chairman of the Durham- based Arngrove Group, he has a personal fortune put at £75m, many more millions given to favourite causes like Romanian orphanages, drugs education and the 300 "rescued" animals - ostriches, marmosets, rare breed pigs, an ark of munificence - which roam next to his country home near Carlisle.

He is 58, has one kidney, has had two heart attacks, suffers from the debilitating illness ME. He exists, so far as reasonably may be ascertained, on a diet of Marlboro Lite, Lucozade, philanthropy and genius. The greatest of these is philanthropy.

The Portakabin back at the Raydale Park ground is furnished from his former company headquarters, a coal owner's mansion at Fencehouses, near Houghton-le-Spring. It wasn't when he had nowt, just when he had a bit less.

There are deep leather armchairs - the plush sofa's for Molly, the dog - original oil paintings, mahogany desks, no longer any ash trays. It may be the only professional football club where the fans can walk in like it's a corner shop; it's certainly the only one where the owner will personally sell them a scarf, and count the pennies.

Ron McGregor, involved since Northern League days, is on the phone to yet another journalist. "Formed in 1946, prisoners of war helped flatten the pitch, 35 years in the Carlisle and District League, Northern League second division," he recites.

Ron's still chairman, still has the best desk. "It's just unbelievable, a dream," he says. "I'm still pinching myself from getting into the Northern League in 1982, we loved it there. Last Saturday we won the Scottish second division, tomorrow we're playing Dundee in the Scottish FA Cup semi-final, next season we could be in Europe You couldn't write it, could you? It's Brooks."

He is not, of course, a universal Mr Wonderful. Scottish football is a small world, in which there are small minds and green eyes.

Jon Tait, the press officer, has had a call from the Daily Record seeking a back page splash. "You can tell Rangers and Celtic aren't in the semi-finals," he says.

The next call's from his mate, heading to the big match from the south and arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act at York railway station. "I wonder if the Daily Record would be interested," says Jon.

Brooks is wearing Asda jeans, cowboy shirt, grizzled grey pony-tail. "I feel sorry for Dundee," he says, and means it. "We seem to have become everyone's second favourite club, everyone wants us to do it."

White mini-skirted, the day's last bride totters obliviously from the nuptial sausage machine. Brooks, himself teetotal, asks someone to get half a dozen bottles of champagne from the Spar shop. "Well," he says, "the way things have been going around here, anything's possible around here."

Saturday, 10.45am. They've gone from Horden to Hampden, 12.15 kick-off, the first second division side since 1982 - Forfar, forebye - to reach the semi-final. None has ever reached the final.

Brooks and his little gang of half a dozen or so have arrived at Michael's fish shop, 200 yards behind the ground - deep fried red, white and black puddings. The flour of Scotland.

Like Alf Tupper, the Tough of the Track, fish and chips have become a pre-match ritual. The multi-millionaire and his mates eat them in a little alley round the back, amid the Biffa bins and sectarian graffiti. It's a picture worth a thousand words.

Lofty Grant, a Gretna fan for 52 years, pulls out a packet of candy cigarettes. "It's all we're allowed, ken," he says. "I had to bring something tae the party."

Brooks is wearing his best jeans - "clean on this morning" - maybe even a new elastic band round his pony tail. That morning's Times describes him as a little boy with a Hornby Double-O who suddenly found he had a steam engine.

He hasn't slept all night. "I was fine all yesterday when we were doing things, answering the phone, selling tickets, rushing round like silly beggars.

"As soon as I got home my legs buckled, my nerves went, my wife just stopped out of the way."

He always goes with his mates, stands with them on the terraces wherever they can, shuns ritually the board room and the blazer brigade. "I don't care for them and I don't care for their uniforms," he says. They don't eat their fish and chips out of the paper, either.

Once Hampden Park held 135,000, with little regard for health, safety or who was peeing in your back pocket. The handsomely rebuilt stadium accommodates just 52,000.

There are signs to the crematorium but none to the ground, an hour before kick-off the atmosphere is appropriately funereal.

The Old Firm, short changed from this season's competition, have put up the shutters in the hope that the weekend will go away. A stall sells T-shirts with the slogan "Keep Scotland tidy, bin the gruesome twosome."

The only queue outside the ground is for Brooks's autograph. Half the fans still call him Miles, believing it to be his first name, perhaps perplexe d when they read what he's written. These days he just writes Brooks. Saves time, he says.

The stadium bookies call it Gretna 19-20, Dundee - the fourth first division side they've faced - 21-10. A replay at Motherwell is 12-5.

We enter through gate P1, once the number of the psychiatric ward at Darlington hospital. "How bloody appropriate," says the self-styled barmpot.

There's a drum, but no pipes. There's a chap in a kilt, but he's also wearing light brown loafers and Marks and Spencer socks. Heaven knows how many are true fans.

Saltaire solitary, the ends are deserted, the semi-final crowd just over 14,000.

Even when the second division trophy is to be presented, Raydale Rab had written to the Annandale Observer: "Mr Mileson will once again have to hand out hundreds of free tickets to the weans in order to get a decent crowd."

Jon Tait's mate is innocent, waving the pink slip that details his stop and search.

There's a coach load from Skye, a contingent from Sweden. The flag passing over our heads is from the Isle of Wight branch of the Gretna Supporters' Club.

Double whammy, Brooks is not only forbidden to smoke but, since bottles are also disallowed in the stadium, denied his soothing Lucozade.

He's almost hidden behind upturned collar and black and white scarf.

There's a minute to kick-off. "How the hell am I going to get through this?" he asks.

Saturday 12.15pm. The moment they kick off, something strange happens. Gretna's fairy godfather begins a low and incessant murmur, like an overhead power line on time and a half.

"I was all right until he blew that whistle," he says.

The VIP boxes are about 50 rows behind, and could be 500 miles away. Ron McGregor, lovely feller, will be up there glad handing. It's probably what chairmen are for.

Brooks doesn't say much, or indeed have much to talk about, until the 45th minute. Kenny Deuchar, Gretna's flying doctor, collects a sickly back pass, rounds the keeper, shoots for goal. A Dundonian clears, desperately, Deuchar's upraised arm claims credibility.

The programme has a piece about new goal line technology specifically to address such situations, plausible until the FIFA spokesman is named as Aap Rilful. The assistant ref does the job impeccably, 1-0. "I told you we were getting on top," says Brooks.

At half-time he signs more autographs - "Thanks, Miles" - talks to everyone. "I thought you might have got dressed up, just for a wee change," someone says.

"I am dressed up," says Brooks.

A plastic fag, made to look and stink like the real thing, is pressed to his lips when it all becomes too much. Half Hampden pats him on the back, as if many hands make Lite work. By 60 minutes he's humming like a barbershop quartet.

McGuffie's penalty, thanks but not really, eases the tension. The mobile telephone to which umbilically he is attached begins a rapid intake of breathless messages; only a cardiograph attached to his chest capable of bleeping more furiously.

Barry Smith's egregious own goal makes it 3-0 on 82 minutes; and puts the issue beyond doubt.

Gretna are in the final, probably in Europe. Put that in your Mills and Boon and pulp it.

Alan Kernaghan, ten years at Middlesbrough and now Dundee's manager, slumps sad shouldered to the dug-out. Brooks is on his feet, great tears swelling like the Solway Firth, arms pounding the air.

Lofty, ecstatic, says how ridiculous it is when people talk of Gretna buying success.

"He's only bought six players and the most expensive was £60,000.

"You could nae get a bag of peanuts for that at Chelsea."

Like a reluctant bride, Brooks has to leave the gleeful gaggle on P1 to embrace the world and his new-found wife, to salute the manager and players to whom he ascribes all the credit, to confront (and to confound) the nation's media. It'll be ten times worse at the final.

"I never planned it, never imagined it, could never have dreamed it," he says before climbing over the fence and out on to planet earth, insists that there'll be no post-match celebration.

"We'll just be going home and worry about the final tomorrow. Besides, who's going to feed the ostrich?

Published: 04/04/2006