There are football fairytales and there is Gretna. Even they, in their exceptional short-term history and all the thrills and spills that has accompanied them in their ride to the peak of Scottish football, could not have expected the sheer exhilarating dramatic finale to their afternoon in Dingwall.

The Raydale Park club had gone into the final day of the season at Victoria Park knowing they had blown a 12-point lead to just one. They knew they were playing Ross County — a side battling for their lives, depending on the result of their fellow relegation strugglers, Airdrie United, at Queen of the South. And they woke up to statements from their promotion rivals’ chairman saying it would be a disaster for Scottish football if Gretna were to be promoted to the Bank of Scotland Premierleague.

However, they also had the backing of over 500 travelling fans — around a quarter of the population of the little Borders town. And at around three minutes deep into injury-time, with the helicopter carrying the Scottish League first division trophy hovering and expecting to land at Hamilton Academical’s New Douglas Park to present St Johnstone with the trophy, Gretna proved what many had known all along — this team has guts.

Gretna had already shown plenty of the stuff to haul themselves ahead after Michael Gardyne’s opener for Ross County, with James Grady and Nicky Deverdiks putting them ahead before Diarmuid O’Carroll levelled. St Johnstone had already secured a 4-2 win at New Douglas Park and the Perth fans were tuned to their radios when Gretna mounted one last attack.

The scenes when Grady tucked the ball under the body of Craig Samson, the Ross County goalkeeper, for the winner were simply unbelievable. The entire Gretna bench leapt on to the pitch while the scorer ran full-length into the crowd and it looked doubtful whether he would come out. You can bet at that stage, Gretna would have paid any money to see the face of Geoff Brown, the St Johnstone chairman, who had come out with such an ill-advised attack on the day of the game.

As Davie Nicholls, the veteran midfield player, so beautifully put it after the game, “Geoff Brown can shut his mouth. I’m delighted for our owner, Brooks Mileson, because he doesn’t shout his mouth off about anything — he just gets on with it. We have had our fair share of knockers but, honestly, that ending was like a World Cup final. It was incredible.

“It’s been a rollercoaster couple of years, but you would have never have thought we would have gone up like that. That is a bigger achievement than reaching the Scottish Cup final, although I said to the boys that maybe this was karma because I thought we deserved to win the final last year. All we have done in the last few weeks is hit a bad patch, but we were always confident going into the match.”

Of course, it would be wrong to ignore the relegation of Ross County, a team who had also risen, in their case from the Highland League to the first division, but unlike their opponents, could not quite take the final leap up and will play in the second division next season.

Davie Irons, Gretna’s caretaker manager, celebrated alongside Rowan Alexander, the exiled manager, who was sent away on sick leave a couple of months ago with stress, although, surely, Victoria Park probably wasn’t the place to be if he was looking for a cure.

And Irons was another who was full of praise for Mileson, who has taken a team that were playing in England’s UniBond League five years ago to contemplating games against the Old Firm next season.

“Without Brooks, all this would not have been possible,” Irons said. “Scottish football needs guys like Brooks — he’s been fantastic.

“It was just an unbelievable finish to the match. You see that on television, but you never think it happens. They say that winning promotion from the English Championship is worth £40 million, well, I don’t care if that goal is worth £4 or £40 to us — it’s just priceless.”

Priceless it may have been, but not impossible because, as the helicopter with its precious cargo came into view at 5.45pm on Saturday, it was clear. Gretna don’t do impossible.

Ross County (4-4-2):C Samson 7 — M McCulloch 6, A Dowie 7, A Keddie 6, D Moore 5 — D Adams 8 (sub: C Gunn, 87min), D Cowie 7, A Morgan 6 (sub: M Scott, 46 5), M Gardyne 8 — D Shields 6 (sub: S Higgins, 65 4), D O’Carroll 7. Substitutes not used: M Tomei, H Robertson. Booked: Moore, Dowie.

Gretna (4-4-2): Z Malkowski 6 — D Cowan 6, M Grainger 7, M Canning 7, G Skelton 7 — J O’Neil 8, D Nicholls 7 (sub: E Paartalu, 60 4), N Deverdiks 7 (sub: D Graham, 60 4), B McGill 6 (sub: R Baldacchino, 75 3) — J Grady 7, C McMenamin 5. Substitutes not used: G Fleming, N McFarlane. Booked: Nicholls.