Brooks Mileson: Entrepreneur and football chairman

Published on Tuesday 4 November 2008 18:52

Born: 13 November, 1947, in Sunderland. Died: 3 November, 2008, in Carlisle, aged 60.

BROOKS Mileson instilled in people he met the impression that he had a ready supply of magic beans. He would sprinkle them on to an enterprise and watch it grow like the fabled beanstalk, with no ceiling in sight.

Mileson died on Monday, having been found unconscious in the 100-acre grounds of the home in Blackford, Cumbria, he had turned into a sanctuary for neglected ostriches, wallabies, racoons and monkeys. A man whose fortune once approached 100 million, he seemed determined in his latter years to invest in everything but his own future.

The Mileson portfolio encompassed insurance, property, car hire and clothing interests, but he will be remembered here for his six-year ownership of Gretna Football Club, a village team he led to the Scottish Cup Final, the Uefa Cup and the Scottish Premier League.

One astounding triumph over adversity had already book-ended his life – when doctors told him at 11 he would never walk again. Not only did Mileson – one of seven children who grew up in a two-bedroomed council house in Sunderland – defy that prognosis, he became a renowned runner, a teenage rival to north-eastern favourite Brendan Foster and the winner of international cross-country medals.

He had been playing with friends in a quarry when a wall of sand pinned him to the ground, inflicting kidney damage, dislocating his hips and a breaking a bone in his lower back. When allowed home, rather than brood on his grim prognosis, he would wait until his parents were asleep, then slump out of bed and pull himself around the room on the furniture, until his legs began to co-operate.

Having left school at 16, Mileson became an accountant and, after being made redundant in 1982, set up a construction firm before becoming managing director and later chairman of Arnott Insurance, which came to employ 1,000 staff on a 100 million turnover. Mileson never publicly divulged details of his family life. He is believed to have been married twice and had at least two sons, only one of whom, Craig, entered public life, joining his father's footballing quest as a director at Gretna.

In the late 1990s the pony-tailed millionaire, in ailing health, explored the north of England looking to lavish money on the sport he loved most (running was something he confessed to having hated, and did only out of spite). He failed twice to buy Carlisle United and instead took over Conference outfit Scarborough in 2000, buying the club for 1 and writing off its debt. But the potential was lacking; a year later he had moved on and by 2007 Scarborough was wound up.

Mileson became president of Whitby Town and invested hundreds of thousands in the Northern League (Albany, his car-hire group, was title sponsor) and junior competitions in Hartlepool through Crest Identity. It was in the former that he discovered the vehicle for his fantasy. Gretna was just another tiny club with broken wings but there was a difference in potential: it lay north of the Border, and club officials already knew their future lay in Scottish football.

In the town famed for weddings of English elopers, Mileson became besotted by this romantic notion and, in a period when he made 46.8 million from the sale of Albany and sold Arnott for 17 million, he put 8 million of his own money into the Gretna project. The club gained entry into the Scottish Football League in 2002, at the third attempt, and Mileson saw no reason not to climb every rung of the ladder.

Players could scarcely believe the wages on offer. Some turned down SPL contracts to join Gretna in the third or the second division, which they won at the first attempt by a landslide margin in 2006. Soon every fan had heard of Brooks Mileson, partly because he gave money to dozens of fans' trusts; partly because Gretna had made it to Hampden Park for a cup semi-final, where they breezed past Dundee 3-0.

Mileson smoked 80-100 cigarettes a day and drank copious amounts of Lucozade. He could indulge in neither vice at this stadium, and, sitting as ever among ordinary fans, he was a nervous wreck. But he would get used to the big days: a May cup final where they lost to Hearts only after a penalty shoot-out; a Uefa Cup tie, albeit one that was lost to Derry City; and a goal in the last minute of the season at Ross County that secured Gretna's place in the SPL.

The owner had survived two heart attacks and struggled through life with one kidney and ME. With typically fatalistic cheer he remarked that the Gretna fairytale had extended his existence by years.

Years, but not decades. When he went into hospital with a brain infection in February, not even his son had a key to the Mileson safe; staff went unpaid and Gretna folded, forfeiting their place in the SPL that had always felt incongruous, with the team forced to play in Motherwell because they were based in a village. It was grimly acknowledged that few but his loved ones and doctors would ever see Mileson again.