Still fire in the Irons as he loses his heart to Gretna

Scotland's oldest serving player is adding to the romance of an unlikely affair. Phil Gordon talks to him

Asking someone's age has always been considered bad for business in Gretna. At 41, David Irons is unlikely to be confused with any of the young runaways who eloped there. For over a century, the Dumfriesshire town profited from its location just a mile inside Scotland, where marriage requirements were less stringent than across the border. Now, though, it's Gretna's footballers who are enjoying their honeymoon period.

Four months have passed since the club were voted into the Scottish Football League, but that special morning-after glow has not worn off. "It has taken a while for euphoria to die down," smiled Irons.

Gretna FC spent 56 years pushing back the boundaries, the Scottish club who plied their trade in England. The calendar of the Unibond Northern League was hastily swapped for the Bell's Scottish Third Division in June when Rowan Alexander's team were chosen to replace bankrupt Airdrie.

However, Gretna are certainly not wet behind the ears. Scotland's newest club can boast the country's oldest player: Irons is still employing his talent in midfield at an age when most of his contemporaries have opted for a coach's tracksuit.

Irons did that when he originally hung up his boots six years ago after a long career that included Dunfermline and Partick Thistle. He took a job on the Scottish FA's coaching staff, but was told he could no longer play for a club. A move back to his native Dumfries, the largest town in the sparsely populated south-west of Scotland, brought a change of role and allowed Irons to manage non-league club Annan Athletic until Alexander enticed him to join Gretna's band in the summer.

Now he's fallen in love with the game all over again. "I've had a new lease of life and I am enjoying every moment," enthuses Irons, who drew favourable comparisons with Alan Hansen a decade ago when his Partick Thistle form prompted demands for a Scotland call-up.

"I had never played at this level before, because I spent all my career in the Premier and First Divisions. I had a few games at Annan last year, as player-manager, but I was winding down.

"However, Rowan was desperate to fix up experienced players when Gretna were admitted to the league, so I thought I would give it a try."

Indeed, the Gretna experience has provided Irons with one item that was missing from his scrapbook. "I never played at Hampden Park but now I've done that," he explained. "We went there to face Queen's Park, and what made it more special for my nine-year-old son, Lewis, was that I was out there on the same pitch where we had watched his hero, Zinedine Zidane, when we went to see Real Madrid win the Champions' League final last May."

Gretna had their own 15 minutes of fame. When they made their historic Scottish League debut on 3 August, a crowd of 2,000 (the town has a population of just 3,000) and numerous film crews turned out for the 1-1 draw with Morton. Now they sit comfortably in mid-table, but Irons feels they will not be there for long.

"Rowan is a very ambitious manager and wants promotion, though other new clubs like Inverness Caley Thistle took a while before getting out of the Third Division. The bulk of our team are still drawn from the north of England, so they don't have any real knowledge of the Scottish game yet."

The club's commercial manager, Steve Barker, previously worked down the A74 at Carlisle United. Wolverhampton born and bred, he too has lost his heart to Gretna. "It's very rural but it is a breath of fresh air," said Barker. "A lot of local companies pitched in to help us get the ground up to SFL standards."

Alexander can be found as often out mowing the pitch as in his office, and it was the manager who wooed the other Scottish clubs with a special video when Gretna were up against six other contenders for admission.

Elgin City, over 300 miles north, visit Raydale Park on Saturday in what is the Scottish League's longest journey. "We went up there in August," said Irons. "It's a 600-mile round trip but our ambition was to be in this league, so you get on with it."

Gretna and Irons, it seems, are in it for the long haul.