At the start of the 2001-02 season, the only Celtic occupying the minds of Gretna’s players were West Yorkshire foes Farsley Celtic. Despite hailing from a Scottish town synonymous with eloping couples, Gretna were playing in the seventh tier of the English pyramid and going nowhere fast.
In their 10th consecutive campaign in Northern Premier League Division One, they would miss out on the promotion play-offs once more – finishing 16 points ahead of Farsley, but 23 behind champions Harrogate.
The Anvils were a club picking up the wrong results, in the wrong country.
Just four years later, Gretna were Scottish Cup runners-up and playing in the UEFA Cup. In 2007-08, they were facing the real Celtic as Scottish Premier League equals at Parkhead. Sadly for them, though, the dream couldn’t last and a messy divorce followed.
Gretna’s prosperity owed much to the chain-smoking Brooks Mileson, who grew up on Sunderland’s Pennywell estate and had won bronze at the 1967 English national junior cross country championships. Years earlier, doctors told him he’d never walk again after breaking his back, aged 11, while mucking around with friends in a quarry.
His interest in Gretna was piqued when the club successfully applied to join the Scottish Football Leagueand grooms-to-be headed north to capitalise on Scotland’s more relaxed regulations.
