04/20/24
April 28, 2007
Gretna make history with third title in a row: Club from a tiny Borders town secured promotion to the top flight after just five years in the league, winning their league's title in three straight levels. Can they pressurize the Old Firm next season?
posted by billsaysthis to soccer at 02:29 PM - 9 comments
Couldn't that find them out of the SPL, then? Unless they can get up to 6000 seats or work out some kind of groundshare, I wouldn't be surprised to see Gretna stay down in the First Division. Unless they have rules about that. I don't know those kind of details about Scottish football.
posted by igottheblues at 04:43 PM on April 28, 2007
Good for them. Always nice to see the underdog doing well.
posted by Fence at 04:57 PM on April 28, 2007
Details on the money angle, blarp?
posted by tieguy at 05:16 PM on April 28, 2007
What's funny is in the game Football Manager, if this happened, people would say "They need to fix this, it's unrealistic". Love stories like this.
posted by Drood at 06:23 PM on April 28, 2007
They didn't even start in Scottish football, shifting FAs at some point. They do have a lot of cash behind them too, as blarp said. Brooks Mileson is their version of Abramovich.
posted by Abiezer at 06:32 PM on April 28, 2007
Mileson sounds like an interesting guy.
posted by tieguy at 07:27 PM on April 28, 2007
They used to be part of a trivia question - What league has teams from three different countries in it? I think it was the Unibond Premier League (correct me if I'm wrong, someone), with Gretna (Scotland), a host of English teams and at least one other from Wales. A remarkable rise. This sort of thing gives all of us hope.
posted by owlhouse at 11:28 PM on April 28, 2007
Gretna will be ground sharing with Motherwell Football Club next season.
posted by Jeffwa at 12:16 PM on April 30, 2007
From non-league to the top division in 5 years - that's quite impressive. It should be said that there has been quite a bit of money behind their success, but, still, it was spent wisely! I wonder where they'll play their home games next season. I believe that their ground isn't up to SPL standards..