Dear Brooks, IT'S BEEN quite some time since we were last in correspondence. This note is written in the hope that you are approaching better health and on the back of some difficult times for Scottish football.
I hope it reaches you but understand this is unlikely, since even Ron MacGregor, the man who was chairman of your club and whose wife was a long-time secretary, admitted on Sunday that he has been left in the dark about your current condition. And
note the past tense. MacGregor was chairman of the club. His wife, Helen, was a secretary. This might be employed a lot in this letter, since Gretna have to all intents and purposes been returned to their pre-1946 status. They don't exist. But football might at least continue at Raydale Park if you can make one last grand gesture and purchase the ground as a gift for the locals, to allow a new football team to rise from the club's ashes.
Although I am sure you know all of this.
Your health problems are your own private concern, of course. However, you were prepared to offer detailed accounts of the ailments which were attacking your body during those times when it was desirable to have a high profile. And now we have knowledge of a note you presented to the Scottish Football League management committee. It was included in the submission prepared by the consortium who were generally credited with being Gretna's last chance of survival. In actual fact it was the last but one. You remain the locals' one hope for football to still be played in the town in the months and years to come. Perhaps not as Gretna FC. But as representatives of a proud town, and in whatever league they can gain access to.
In this note, that was described as being handwritten, you expressed a desire for your shares in Gretna to be transferred to the consortium headed by Paul Davies, a Glasgow-based football agent. But at the club itself, where more than 70 people have been made redundant, there has not been so much as a word heard from you, or your family. Your son, Craig, was even still working at the club when the first ominous portents were heard, but remained an enigmatic, peripheral presence. It is hard to escape the conclusion that responsibilities have been shirked.
Gretna have been left high and dry in circumstances that are admittedly difficult, as well as sensitive. You have spoken openly about your respect for those who shunned the lure of major clubs to support teams at the other end of the spectrum. But in the recent silence from anyone connected to the 'Mileson camp' there is an alarming level of scorn for those who you once claimed were your type of people.
The club's history isn't the most gilded, nor is it the longest. But it is worth protecting. The story of Gretna is not just their recent exploits. It's also cracking tales of derring-do in the early Nineties, when a side then in the second tier of the Northern League came through five qualifying rounds to qualify for the first round of the FA Cup, where they almost defeated Bolton. During a 45-year stay in the Carlisle & District league, Gretna won the title on 28 occasions.
You gave them much, Brooks. But in return, they gave you all they had to give, and perhaps more. The ground now looks set to be sold to help pay creditors. There was one Gretna local I remember meeting on one of many trips south to Dumfries & Galloway to report on a tale given fresh momentum by your financial input. He was a circumspect type, who refused to get carried away by the hype. He stressed that he simply wanted the club to be left as it had been found – at worst. Even this modest desire has been made to look wildly optimistic.
You enjoyed a very warm relationship with the media, and other fans of clubs who saw in your ungroomed style a kindred spirit. You handed out contributions to supporters' groups at Dundee United and Ayr United, among other clubs. There was rarely a bad word said about you, and few questioned your love of grass-roots football. Nobody could feign interest in teams such as Whitby Town for so long, they reasoned.
Indeed, your heart proved an easy conquest. And surely, we pondered, the Scottish football world is not so harsh a place that there is no room in it for Brooks Mileson and his band of Gretna over-achievers. But now it appears there is no room. And this is something which provides a lot of ache for the fans of Gretna, who have now had their football club summarily torn from them.
There were doubters. One I recall clutching a pint in the Gretna social club, pressing the pads of a battered looking one-armed bandit. He was a former player for Gretna. A goalkeeper. "There was once a football club there," he motioned in the direction of Raydale Park. "Now it means nothing to the people of Gretna. It's gone to one bloke. What happens when he pulls out?"
Now we know. The answer arrived in a stark email released by the administrators yesterday, advising recipients – perhaps you were on this email list too – of "recent developments". It was everything that had been feared.
You adored your time on the fish supper 'n' Lucozade tour of Scotland. We lapped this up too, and feasted on other colourful aspects of your life, including the animal sanctuary established on the land surrounding your Cumbrian home. You would have something to say about a dog left abandoned shortly after Christmas by its owner. Gretna and the club's fans deserve at least a note of explanation for what has happened in the course of the last year. Otherwise Brooks Mileson, man of the people, will be remembered as just another of football's bogeymen. No one wants this, Brooks.
Yours in sport,
Alan Pattullo
apattullo@scotsman.com
