Now or never as Irons takes one last gamble

Gretna manager hasn't given up on miracle but admits club is partly planning for life back in First Division

YESTERDAY was a day of clarity for Davie Irons. Eyeing Gretna's predicament through an unclouded lens, the manager admitted that talks have taken place about preparing for life back in the First Division, and that five new loan signings represent his last chance of turning one SPL campaign into two.

As he nears 12 months in charge – Irons has effectively managed the team since Rowan Alexander's breakdown after a match on 3 March last year – the 46-year-old is honest enough to concede his club are clinging to their top-flight status while drawing up contingency plans for the first-ever league demotion that looms so depressingly large, nine points adrift of Kilmarnock and 12 of St Mirren. Not that we should mistake prudence for defeatism.

"It would be crazy not to think about that possibility," Irons told The Scotsman. "As it stands now, it looks like we are going to be the team that goes down. We are not giving up hope, but it would be crazy to stick your heads in the sand and not think about it. Ultimately we are still very much concentrating on trying to stay up and, with a turn in fortune, I think we can."

The small-town club from the southern frontier fostered John-Paul Kissock, Rostyn Griffiths, Rhys Meynell, Ben Wilkinson, and Artur Krysiak from English clubs in the transfer window. Don't be ashamed to exclaim "Who?" for none of them has played first-team football. The first two mentioned, and perhaps the third, will start today at Tynecastle in a team that bears no comparison to the band of ageing rockers who pushed Hearts to the brink of Scottish Cup infamy in 2006. Brooks Mileson's hire-and-fire policy has one redeeming factor: there is consistency in the ruthlessness.

Even a raft of players who escaped last summer's annual, post-promotion cull – James Grady, Colin McMenamin, David Graham, Martin Canning, Danny Grainger, Allan Jenkins, Erik Paartalu and David Cowan – have become Gretna alumni in the past few months as their pragmatic owner continues to keep the broom industry afloat. Some were farmed out on loan but Kenny Deuchar is surely unique as a player who leaves Gretna via the front door and is ushered back through the same entrance.

The incoming colts, frustrated academy products and reserve-dwellers from Everton, Blackburn, Barnsley, Hull and Birmingham respectively, are acquisitions borne of hope but Irons denies plucking them out of thin air in a desperate, dying clutch. Kissock, for example, a Goodison Park nearly man, has long been on the radar of director of football Mick Wadsworth.

"We have gambled to an extent but we haven't just brought anyone in – these are young players but they all have real ambition to prove themselves in first-team football and they all come up with glowing reputations of being, potentially, good players," Irons said.

"We will blood two or three of them against Hearts. John-Paul Kissock will come in for Fabian Yantorno and probably start in central midfield. Rostyn Griffiths will come in on the right side of midfield and Rhys Meynell will possibly play in defence.

"Ben Wilkinson (son of Howard, the former Leeds manager] has a thigh strain so we don't want to rush him, and our Polish goalkeeper has come in initially as back-up to Greg Fleming. There seems to be a conveyor belt of Polish goalkeepers but he is an under-20 international, he is highly regarded by (his Birmingham City manager] Alex McLeish and we are happy to have him.

"We have been looking at some of them since last season, and what we were looking for was hunger and – to an extent – fearlessness. The SPL is not something they know anything about so there won't be any fear associated with it. I hope that rubs off on the other players at the club."

Irons needn't lose sleep; surely few of those players will linger long under his charge, especially if Gretna go down. The great survivors, Chris Innes and Gavin Skelton, now have a roster of former colleagues that would fill a gridiron locker-room several times over. The loaned-out David Bingham referred to the club as "the funny farm" before Christmas, and most sobriquets have been less flattering.

So, doesn't it irk Irons, another mainstay, that feelings of shared progress are always so fleeting?

"It has been emotional because there is an attachment to working with players for a period of time," said the former midfielder.

"We pride ourselves on being a close-knit group and when you see boys you have known, not just at Gretna but before that, and all of a sudden they are gone, it's tough. It's part and parcel of working for a football club, I suppose. But most of them look back on their time at Gretna as a particularly enjoyable time in their careers, and we send them on with our best wishes."

Irons can only speak for himself, of course, and perhaps we can permit him looking at one subject through black-and-white-tinted glasses. The truth is that few clubs are more savagely bad-mouthed, both by jettisoned players and by conservative, disapproving rivals. At least Irons has won respect for some of his team's more ebullient coups this term, including a win at Tannadice and an almighty fright visited upon Celtic at Fir Park. Also, four-nil remains their heaviest reverse.

So can a condemned team actually enjoy life in the SPL despite playing out a seemingly inevitable fate? "It's the place to be," said Irons.

"I have had experiences of good times with Gretna since day one – fantastic experiences of winning things and getting to the cup final – but this has been the most enjoyable in terms of the challenge.

"It has been a great opportunity to compete against the big teams and the top managers, seeing how you get on against the likes of Walter Smith and Gordon Strachan. The players have enjoyed it, too.

"It has been tough but don't forget we have not been battered at any time. We haven't taken a real hammering, we have always kept ourselves up, and I have said to the players: 'Look: we are not that far away.' I hope the new players can give us that bit more spark, because there are still 16 games to go and a lot of points to be won."