Will be expelled from the SPL in a couple of days.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/sou ... 430745.stm

Latest offer withdrew.

This is the most tragic story of a football club folding (especially after being to all intents and purposes so successful, all be it for a short term I have ever seen in my entire life.

RIP Gretna Football Club.

What do you mean, you don't care ?

How many times have I heard people say how sad it would have been if Bournemouth had went out of the League.

Because we all know that it's all sad to see a football club die, even though you have rivalries with it on the pitch.

Still a bit harsh on the fans and people out of a job though?

So, let me get this straight, you're saying that you have no sympathy for a small Scottish amateur club who have folded completely after three seasons of continued talent and success, produced a great Scottish player in the form of Kenny "The Good Doctor" Deuchar, reached the Scottish Cup Final and nearly won it, rose through the divisions of the Scottish League, only for their chairman to fall, they slump back down the divisions, their whole staff have been made redundant, and in a couple of days time the SPL will offcially exile them.

Hmmmm.

Kentish, I'm all for supporting the underdog but is there no end to the list of needy individuals we should be supporting?
Singing bin-men, twirling Manchester street boys, small Scottish football teams.....Where does it end?

Kenny "The Good Doctor" Deuchar was only good in third division footy, which is coats for goalposts stuff, when he played in the England, for Northampton, he did feck all

I care not a single jot for Gretna or any club that folds, Hartlepool United are first and foremost, after all before the days of the internet and message boards, did any one really care about what Garry Gibson did to us???????

I agree it's hard to get worked up about this. Gretna will go the journey meaning another club will get their chance and good luck to them whoever they are.
Since Gretna were nowhere to start with, their supporters haven't lost anything compared with what they had before his adventure began. If they are passionate they always can start up a new club, which Accy Stan, Aldershot, and Wimbledon have shown us is entirely possible.

I don't see any difference between Gretna and Rushden; I reckon you'd be hard put to find anyone on any board who gives a toss about the latter.

Alright, grabec, calm down, just because I talk about these tpoics doesn't mean to say anything, I'm just creating light conversation on issues that are relevant at the moment - I didn't really care about George Sampson, just put it on therfe to start a thread.

Was this not a publicity stunt to get everybody married there

How old are you like, 12?

You get way too emotional over small things mate Gretna have had this coming ever since Mileson pulled out

Not great either way, but I can think of more tragic football happenings in my time.

Plus one team will apply for the league that you can't get relegated from. Spartans, Preston Athletic, Annan Athletic and Cove Rangers are all vying for a position!

Fu ck 'em. I care not a jot.

They were OK as a pre-season friendly but I can't see society suffering because of the loss of a shortbread outlet....

He didn't pull out GP, all he did was fell ill and the cash stopped from there - that's what makes it tragic to me, not that there wasn't cash in the first, but rather there was and the injection stopped

Too young too remember Colne Dynamos then?

Listen to me carefully......

They are Scootish
They are bounders
I don't care
They are bounders and Scootish
I couldn't care less

They are nobjocksters and bounders

And I don't care

PS

Fook 'em all, I remember 'Fans United' day against the poofs from the South coast, Hartlepool United Football Club were looked upon as the shite upon the shoe of the whole football league that day, so fcuk the lot of them

PPS

Fook 'em

I know he fell ill. I corrected someone on it earlier who implied he was dodgy. The guy won an award at the Local Heroes thing the same night my dad did - he's contributed a phenomenal amount to sport.

The thing is though, Division Three Scottish clubs are nothing teams who get about 600 a week. If you're going to lament the loss of Gretna as the most tragic thing in your lifetime then you might as well be gutted about the loss of the teams in Hartlepool and the severe downsizing of the likes of the Church League. They were sharing a ground and had a bloke owning who smokes 80 a day alongside drinking 12-15 bottles of Lucozade. Honestly - the bloke prided himself on it.

A lack of foresight and their lightning rise only shows two things:
a) that Scottish football is a joke and
b) it really doesn't take much to make a 'big' club. Pools would be Scottish Premiership easily.

Hang on, I went that day and all, why were we looked upon like SH1T.

Can someone fill me in on this Fans United business?

http://www.inthemadcrowd.co.uk/cgi-bin/itmc_view_match.asp?oid=3735

A day held by Brighton to promote themselves within the community and raise funds - hammered us 5-0 - only trip to the Goldstone.

Without checking my facts, it was a game against Brighton at the Goldstone, there had been protests against the owners who were selling the ground without any plans to replace it, and they declared the game against Pools to be a "Fans United" day, asking fans from every other club to come down and show their support for Brighton and contempt for the board, with a big crowd almost entirely behind the home side we got spanked 5-0. At the time we were both at the wrong end of the table, so it was a big result for them and a poor one for us, and of course had we managed to win that day we'd have been the big bad wolf. I can't remember for certain, but I think it was the year Hereford went down on the last day and we were only safe a couple of games before that... Tait era?

The whole Scottish Football thing is odd in that it's effectively a closed shop - until this season, even the Scottish Cup has only allowed a minority of the teams playing in Scotland to enter. They have three governing bodies (SFA for "Senior", SJFA for "Junior" - ie adult but equivalent to the sort of sides in the Wearside League who get 50-100, and one for Amateur as well) and there's no obvious path for say an ambitious "Junior" side to work its way into the Senior Leagues - it's all a case of applying to join a Senior League. Even then, there is no sort of pyramid, no path into the SFL - clubs have to effectively wait for the SFL to expand (which was when the likes of Inverness CT, Ross County and Elgin joined), or for one of the existing members to go bust. Gretna don't forget were actually playing in the (English) Unibond League, but had also put a team into one of the Senior Leagues in Scotland while they waited for a vacancy which came up when Airdrie went to the wall. If there's anyone to be sorry for it's Clydebank - when the reformed Airdrie United lost out to Gretna, they effectively went and bought Clydebank and moved them to Airdrie. You have some ambitious clubs who will want the place that Gretna (who were as much a rich man's plaything as Rushden and Diamonds) have now vacated; however they have to sit and watch the likes of East Stirling (Average attendance 385) have a successful season by finishing next to bottom following six years of finishing bottom, with little or no chance of displacing them....

Spartans are likely to replace Gretna in the SFL very soon. Either them or Brora Rangers

No wonder The Premier league clubs broke away - the football family!

But nobody wants Scots in their family do they?

You need to post more often. I've never been more genuinely intrigued by an off-the-top-of-the-head enlightenment than that.

Apart from ADG's rant earlier, of course

Haven't you realised yet that the relevance of the Premier League to clubs in our division is about the same as a bicycle to a fish? And that it's getting worse?

Consider the situation pre-Prem. Not only was a larger proportion of the TV money shared around, clubs at the top often went shopping in the lower leagues for players, which helped keep some clubs going and helped as well fans of lower league clubs feel a bit more connected to what was on Match of the Day. I'm sure Scunny fans felt a bit of pride seeing Keegan become the best-known player in English football for example, or Lee Sharpe for Torquay fans, or David Speedie [spit] for Darlo fans, or John McGovern for us, or Trevor Steven for Burnley, or Tow Law for Chris Waddle....

Instead virtually the entire Prem goes for foreign stars, any young player is either hoovered up by the top clubs academies or is signed in the late teens for relatively small fees, and we have the situation where when the in theory English sides contesting the Champions League final don't have enough players in their squads for the game to field an England XI between them, Arsenal have more foreign players than English in their reserves never mind the first team, and suggestions from FIFA that it might be better to have more home-grown players in teams are met with howls of protest. The money juggernaut that is the Prem has even considered playing a set of games abroad in a shameless attempt to pull in even more money, possibly as they've realised that the businesses that they now run need to expand overseas as the UK market is already close to saturation point. The top clubs are owned by overseas interests, or are being eyed by them.

The Premier League Clubs didn't break away from the Football Family for football reasons, they broke it to see if they could squeeze more money out of it. Listen to the likes of Peter Kenyon and you'll see that there's nothing some of them would like better than to pull the ladder up behind them. You'd just better hope that The Bates Motel Roadshow can get you back there before they do.....

And Parmo chinned a gobshite Southampton fan, which was spot on!!!


Brighton, bounders the lot

I hate football 'love-ins'

Fcuk the lot

I did the opposite, bought loads from there, just to stick it up the bounders from the Sarf Coast

Few clubs have helped us in hour of need, so I pick and choose which ones I will be 'brothers in arms' with....

I fully concur.

Sorry to whine on, but I though this sort of thing wasn't supposed to happen in football today.

I thought we'd seen the dark days go of the likes of Accrington, Aldershot and Barrow fold from the League - indeed two of them have only just come back and Barrow are now in the Blue Square Premier.

RIP Gretna Football Club 1946 - 2008 - the real casulaty of the Credit Crunch crisis.

These are grim times indeed: high fuel prices, high food prices, UK last in Eurovision, no England at Euro 2008, six years after arriving, the small Gretna reach the SPL, Scots Cup and UEFA Cup and then dies, and it looks as if we're heading for another Conservative government after several horrible moments for Mr. Brown.

What is the world coming to ? Honestly !!!

Are you real?

No particular team at the moment, I suppose you could look at the clubs who helped us back in the days of re-election

Mutters, Pools in particular have been shafted over big style by almost everyone imaginable

Starter for ten

Sheff Utd

Oh, I'm real all right, I tell you what this may sound a bit maudling, but when our founding fathers created HUFC, I bet they would have thought that the world would be a different and better place after 100 years, now I'm not so sure.

At the moment, 2008 is turning out to be an annus horribilis

Well it only demonstartes John how things have changed, Eurovision was one of the reasons why this country's mujsic became famous over the Sixties, and Britian became a major cultural and political player.

I'm afraid to say it, but see how times have unfortunately changed !

You have got to be kidding me. Please tell me you're kidding me.

Further proof that the 'credit crunch' is to blame for everything.

Even Brookes Mileson's brain infection. If only he'd a have listened to that money saving goon on GMTV and shopped around for his petrol he'd be fine now.

Serious question Kentish, are you a full shilling?

Does this answer your question ?



Where were the investors, GP ? Good business opportunity that, build the suad up and make them a force in Scottish football, got yourself a nice drink really ?

But what I want to know is will high oil prices harm IOR and its ability to buy players at Pools ?

As if someone in real life has blamed the credit crunch for something they don't know anything about (seemingly). A bit like the news though, I suppose. I heard that pets were dying due to the credit crunch because people couldn't afford Pedigree as it's gone up by 1p a tin.

And you're right PJ. If he hadn't have spent his money on cigarettes and Lucozade and got the credit crunch brain infection, he'd've been fine.

I did feel a bit guilty when being relentless with Kentish at one point, but there's only so much rope you can give him before he hangs himself with it again I'm starting to think he's a very very clever Darlo fan trying to take the piss big time

And Kentish, you reckon high oil prices will affect a company whose job it is to recover oil? If anything, they're in demand more now than ever...

Well, as long as we don't fall into obscurity like Gretna, then that's good.

The question is, what happens when the oil runs out ?

We'll all have parties on the tube, be fanatical to the point of scariness about Eurovision, and drink turpentine whilst posting on message boards.

That's if we can afford it with this credit crunch.

Where's the motivation to recover oil anyway now Gretna have folded, what's the point in going on? We're all doomed.

*Starts cooing like a pigeon*

What was the point of that ?

More importantly, what's turpentine ?

Either Kentish is now doing this on purpose, or he's starting to outstay his welcome.

Crest was actually owned by the bloke who also owned Gretna. A sad day when Crest closed I know a number of people who worked there and of course HUDSA used to get their T-Shirts and other goods from them.

When the oil runs out, IOR'll be long gone anyway. You think IOR are gonna own HUFC for the next 100 years?