Kernaghan on the high road

Gretna, Northern League members until 1992 and now financed and inspired by Sunderland-born former British cross country champion Brooks Mileson, play Dundee in the Scottish Cup semi-final a week tomorrow, from Horden to Hampden.

If Dundee beat Gretna and Hibs beat Hearts the following day, Kerny will face former Boro colleague Tony Mowbray - now Hibernian manager - in the final. Dundee haven't won the cup since 1910.

Tay return, it seemed time for a train ride to bonny Dundee.

Sadly, however, it is as the Scottish bard himself observed: the best laid schemes o' mice and men gang aft a-gley. . .

TRADITIONALLY it is the city of jam, jute and journalism, to which gibberish - in the form of the heroically incompetent Victorian poet William Topaz McGonagall - might almost be added.

"McGonagall is Dundee's best remembered nobody, " says a profile. "His poems, if nothing else, have the quality of inimitability."

It is also the home of Liz McColgan, of Janet Keillor (who invented marmalade) and of the iconic Courier, said in 1912 to have carried the headline: "Titanic sinks: Dundee man feared lost."

The Broons and Oor Wullie bide there or thereabouts, Dennis the Menace - 55 last week and still not out of short trousers - still hides amid the catty combs.

Though snow is in the air, the city is reputedly Scotland's sunniest. A newsagent boasts a special offer on giant Santa socks, as if fooled into the festivity. There's a special Spring offer on duffel coats.

The city centre seems vibrant, with a growing reputation for technological innovation and a statue of Desperate Dan.

The suburbs appear dour, perhaps as in dour Wullie.

Great grim tenement blocks still encircle the cheek-by-jowl football grounds of Dundee and Dundee United, the floodlights so close that they could run off one another's shillings.

Dens Park, Sandeman Street - Kernaghan's latest port of call - appears the more modest of the two, the facade borrowed from L S Lowry, the reception area decorated like a Victorian vestibule. There's a picture of Charlie Cooke, ten goals in 53 games in the 1960s, of Andy Penman - "The penalty king" - and of the refurbished board room.

The stands behind the goals are new, however, ends justifying the means in an attempt to meet Premier League ground standards. They went down - dropped - last season.

Outside the Captain's Lounge, a couple of Dundonians cough their lungs and puff their tabs. Smoking in all enclosed public places in Scotland will be illegal from 6am on Sunday.

The appointment's for 1pm, Wednesday. The receptionist says he's still training but will nae be long. The phone rings 15 minutes later, Kerny calling from Edinburgh, where he lives.

They've taken the day off. "I had it down for Thursday, " he says apologetically. The train had passed through Edinburgh three hours earlier: bonny, or what?

KERNAGHAN Whittington, we meet instead outside the book stall on Waverley station, Edinburgh, pigeons picking up the pieces as the interview proceeds over the Costa coffee cups.

Good bloke, he insists on buying the cappuccino by way of further apology. "It was very unprofessional, " he says, his lilt still lightly Irish, his eyes fixed firmly on England.

The talk is of Big Mal and of Big Jack, of big deals - after ten chest-thumping years at Middlesbrough the big central defender signed for Manchester City in September 1993 for £1.6m - and of big mistakes.

"My biggest was ever leaving Middlesbrough, " he says, unequivocally. "The money at City was four times what I was earning at Boro, but that doesn't mean Boro were paying me badly.

"Steve Gibson had just become chairman at Middlesbrough and told me that if anything happened, I should speak to him first. I was a wee bit full of myself and I didn't."

And Big Jack? As mean as they reckon? "My dad smokes.

We'd be sitting in the hotel in Dublin on international duty and Jack would come over to scrounge a fag, take three and put two behind his ear until later."

It's budget day. His is getting ever smaller, a legacy of others' extravagance. "I enjoy what I'm doing here, bringing in lots of local youngsters, but I'd go back to England in a second in a managerial or coaching capacity. I've had interviews; maybe it was a bit too early."

BORN in Otley, West Yorkshire, he was a 12-year-old in Bangor, Northern Ireland, when spotted by Middlesbrough scout Bobby McCauley.

"A lot of Irish kids went to Man United, " he says. "To be fair, I wasn't asked."

A striker in those days, he made his first team debut alongside David Mills in a team that also included Kelham O'Hanlon, Tony McAndrew and Heine Otto.

It was 1986 and, soon afterwards, Boro were in crisis, the coffers empty and the Ayresome Park gates locked. "We didn't get any money for six or eight weeks. I was a young lad away from home and couldn't even pay my landlady for my digs."

They descended to the third division, rose again in two seasons, Kernaghan hitting a first half hat-trick at Blackburn. "I remember the day at Chelsea when we clinched promotion back to the top division, it was so scary. There was bedlam outside and we had to lock the dressing room door.

"When finally we got out we ended up eating fish and chips on the pavement in Swiss Cottage. That's how we celebrated in those days."

When his wife Gillian came to matches she brought a book.

"She has no interest at all.

Football's very rarely talked about in our house."

He made just 55 Football League appearances in four years at Maine Road, played for Bradford and Bolton on loan, spent four years at St Johnston, helping them to the Scottish Cup final and into Europe, and also played for Brechin, Livingstone, Falkirk and Clyde - where he was also manager.

"With hindsight, it was madness. Just as the money was really taking off in England, I get myself over the border for nine years."

He'll be 39 next month, hasn't played since becoming Dundee's manager in September. "I'd hoped to, but the job has been a wee bit busy and then I was ill before Christmas.

I'm afraid that's it."

He's rudely interrupted. The train for Inverness is standing on platform eleven.

DUNDEE'S dark blues had been seriously in the red, living beyond their means, more Carey Street than Sandeman Street. "The history of the club in the last five years is crazy, " says the manager.

"The team was full of Italians and South Americans on ridiculous money and as a result, the bills became harder and harder to pay. We've been paying the price for the way we lived back then."

It's also "ludicrous", he says, that a city of 150,000 people tries to sustain two clubs at so high a level. "United are still in the top division. I suppose our fans are jealous of their league position, and they're jealous of us being in the semi-final.

"Getting there is a fantastic bonus, but if we don't get promotion next season, I know that I'm on dodgy ground, undoubtedly."

The previous day he'd taken his young squad for a tour of Hampden Park, then gone on to watch Gretna at Ayr. Gretna can probably play better, he supposes.

"I suppose you could say they're a little bit like the Chelsea of Scotland, or at least a Chelsea in the making.

"I don't think they're resented. If anything, people are baffled. If they reach the premier league, as I'm sure they will, they're going to have a huge stadium in a village of 3,000 people.

How are they going to fill it?

"I don't mean that condescendingly. They have a great set-up and all the trappings of a premier league club, but it all seems a bit fanciful. As for the Old Firm, Hearts and Hibs and Dundee and Aberdeen have been trying to challenge them for years and got nowhere near.

Gretna are still an awfully long way from that."

WE spend an enjoyable hour - Kerny crack, as it were - among the punters, the pigeons and the public address. Alan recalls taking his team to play Billingham Synthonia, shortly after he took over.

"I'd really enjoyed Middlesbrough. It became a good home for me and I always get a great welcome going back, but I hadn't realised that they had those banners of Tony and Bernie and them. There wasn't one for me."

Should he help bring the cup back to Dens Park for the first time in 96 years, there'd be banner headlines in the Courier: "Hibs sunk, Dundee lost no longer."

We wished him luck at the Waverley goodbye. He hadn't far to go home.

Unlikely best seller EARLY doors to Dundee, we bump on the train into Frank Orr, whose book on how to find the cricket grounds of "old" Co Durham - produced to mark the 175th anniversary of Durham City CC, where he's second team captain - is proving an unlikely best seller.

"For some reason it seems to be going particularly well on the south coast, " says Frank, a Newcastle solicitor.

"Someone must be planning a pilgrimage."

Word is that similar volumes for Northumberland and the North Riding are now envisaged. Whoever's going out of their way to do it, says Frank, it certainly won't be him.

JUST back in time from Scotland to catch the Arngrove Northern League Cup tie between Darlington RA and Consett, one of those bitter cold nights where you hope the hell there's not extra-time and where there's not only extra-time but penalties. Three men are necessarily subbed in the first quarter of an hour: is this a record?

BROOKS Mileson, munificent boss of the Durham-based Arngrove group, rings the next day. He's been awarded a Fellowship by the University of Lancashire in recognition ofcommunity service on both sides of the border.

"I can't tell you how delighted I am, " he says. "You think these things don't matter, but I was absolutely speechless."

The distinction will be conferred in October at a posh do in Carlisle Cathedral. "I might even have to buy some new jeans, " he says.

Win or lose at Hampden, they could be crowned Scottish second division champions later that afternoon, if Morton lose at Peterhead.

A man who takes Marlboro Lite seriously, Brooks is also the subject of a daily column in the Sun's Scottish edition - "They make most of it up" - as the smoking ban fast approaches.

"They're doing a count of how many cigarettes and how many bottles of Lucozade I get through in a day. I know you're not allowed to advertise smoking, but I thought we might have got a few bob out of Lucozade."

And Finally...

THE historic thing about the Liverpool v Arsenal match on August 22, 1964 (Backtrack, March 21) was that it was the first game to be broadcast on Match of the Day.

Bob Foster in Ferryhill today invites readers to name the player - with a strong NorthEast connection - who has played in the Premiership, Championship, Leagues one and two, the Conference, the Champions League and the UEFA Cup.