The First Base Agency helped to set up the new team

The First Base Agency and Scottish first division side Gretna have jointly created a new team for ex-addicts.

The "First Base Dynamos" have been given weekly coaching with the aim of competing in a league in the future.

Mark Frankland, from the agency, said that as well as offering physical activity the football team has played an important social role.

"You have people who - however they manage it - come off a heroin addiction," he said.

It is basically for anybody who is turning the corner - whether they are out of rehab, out of prison or they are on a drug treatment and testing order Mark Frankland First Base Agency

"A common problem which they have is that they immediately have to give up all their mates.

"They have lived a few years and the only friends they have got are all fellow users - that's their life completely.

"Once they give up there's a big void."

Mr Frankland said that users had been asking the agency for some time to find them a way to meet a different group of people.

Having established a link with Gretna he realised that a football team might be the ideal way to achieve that goal.

Graeme Muir said the club was keen to help tackle the drugs issue

"It is basically for anybody who is turning the corner - whether they are out of rehab, out of prison or they are on a drug treatment and testing order," said Mr Frankland.

"It is just to say that everyone who is turning up is all heading in the same direction.

"So far it has been very successful."

Gretna chief executive Graeme Muir said the club had been keen to enhance its partnership programme with the agency.

"The drugs problem is a social ill for everybody," he said.

"We just want to play our part in helping in any way we can."

He added that the project sought to link up Gretna's football expertise with the First Base Agency's skills in tackling drugs problems.