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Ross County Chairman

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fine-n-dandy Grand Master

fine-n-dandy

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This guy is a breath of fresh air to this game. I understand it's easier for him to dish out the freebies to his support because they have a pretty small support & he's minted but for him to also be offering the away fans free travel etc. is just fantastic also. I particularly like his idea of (rather than simply giving free U12's ST's) selling them next season for £25 but giving them a free County strip with it. In the hope that it lessens the amount of The rangers & Celtic strips in the area.

 

 

HE owns and runs a business worth half a billion pounds a year and a community football club worth its weight in gold.

In the fragmented new landscape of Scottish football, strewn with the detritus of mismanagement, Roy MacGregor should be a guiding light.

A man who believes in customer and fan first, everything else a distant second.

Who invests in the people of Dingwall and Inverness and reaps the rewards. Who lives within his means despite their limitations.

Two hundred miles away from the game’s traditional epicentre, though, his voice remains relatively unheard. A whisper of common sense drowned out by the eternal bickering of the incompetent.

As the chairman of both Ross County and the Global Energy Group he doesn’t take it personally. He has enough on his plate.

That doesn’t mean what he has to say isn’t worth hearing, though.

So when a man of his substance tells you a Scottish game which sees three of its biggest clubs languishing outside the top tier is ripe for reinvention, for re-engagement, someone in the hierarchy should be asking him not why but how.

“Scottish football is still getting an awakening,” said MacGregor. “It’s not so much the sport – I see fledgling shoots all over the place, with young players getting an opportunity but the game is still unable to enthuse the broadcasters and the public.

“I see it in all areas of our game that we have forgotten either our brand or our customer.

“Clubs have to examine their customer, their fan. If you take your eye off that you have questions to answer. It comes back to boards of directors understanding fans.

“Clubs have forgotten their fans and in any business you do that at your peril.

“It’s not finance. Nothing to do with it. Hibs’ budget was five times mine – it’s about your relationship with your customer.

“Football clubs used to have really good relationships but they took it for granted. Now we need to reinvent it – and everything negative that’s happening can have a positive outcome but only if boards and fans groups get their eye back on the right values.

“Hearts have done it, Hibs are doing it as we speak. Rangers still have to find whatever it is they’re looking for. Their directors don’t have their eye on their fans.”

As we talk in his Inverness HQ MacGregor has spent the morning at his club’s ground, throwing ideas at his admin staff on how to improve the matchday experience for their fans, and, uniquely, the away support as well.

He talks free pies, free transport, entertainment, value for kids – anything that is the opposite of standing still. He knows half the ideas might not fly but it won’t stop him stretching his people to try.

He sighed: “We don’t market the game in this country. The league body should be 90 per cent PR and marketing and 10 per cent rules and administration – we’re the other way round.

“Yet I look at what Man City are doing around their stadium and I want to do it. You’re not just going to a game. You’re going to the Man City Experience. You’re there from lunchtime, eating, drinking, being entertained, engaging with the community around the club.

“Today’s pay-as-you-go generation have choices to make. The people are still there, just in a different culture. When we first came in the league we went down to Morton – I’d never been there before and the ground had held 35,000 people at one point.

“And you look out and see the shipyards and decay and you imagine the people who worked there and went for a pie and a pint and then went to the football.

“Yet there were only 1200 people there that day.

“If you fight your fanbase like, say, Rangers are doing, your club will never be right. It’s a dysfunctional relationship. The hierarchy in football is changing for the better but it’s the clubs who need to change. Get real with where they are with their fans, with their stakeholders, with the Press.

“I see it happening because of finance but it needs to be in your soul.

“I’m here with Ross County because I believe in an area which didn’t get an opportunity in a football sense, a talent sense or a business sense to express themselves as part of the UK or Scotland.

“My role is to give people opportunity. I do it with my business and with my football club. And we don’t live beyond our means.”

MacGregor is rightly proud of his club finishing fifth then seventh in their first two seasons of top-flight football, less than 20 years on from becoming a senior club and on one of the smallest budgets and fanbases in the country.

But you’ll never catch him thinking they’ve become something they’re not.

He said: “What’s success for us? To stay in the top division and do well in a Cup. Anything beyond that is aspirational.

“Plug your club into that aspiration. Don’t think you can be a top-six club. It’s not possible. It’s a bonus and you have to be exceptional to do it.

“So just be real and don’t let your supporters get expectations beyond reality. The biggest thing is for the fans to believe you can be better than what you are. You always try to outperform what you are and the fans will come with you.”

MacGregor also refuses to fall into the trap many wealthy football benefactors have. He’s watched Stewart Milne and David Murray make decisions in the game they’d never in a million years have made in business but he said: “I find the discipline of it easy because I worry, if I get expectation beyond reality, I’ll let my community down.

“I go through the wringer the same as every other fan. I’ve been watching my team since 1966 but I’m not on an ego trip.

“I’m in it for an area which has two Premiership teams and is being recognised at last that it’s part of the framework of Scotland.”

Yet not so much part of the framework that he’s ever held office in a game you’d think would be crying out for its best business minds to participate.

“I’ve never been asked,” he deadpans. “But then this part of the world is still trying to come to terms with being part of football and being accepted.

“We’ve never been accepted as part of the football hierarchy and it’s 20 years on. I’m not complaining. We’re 200 miles away from the mass of football supposedly but this season we’re playing five teams who are nearly home games for us, all north of the Tay.

“So it HAS changed. Where the heartland of football was has been rocked.

“It’s getting better though. We’ve had some revolution in the SFA, we have the leagues together again and I believe the structure is better.

“But selling the game is still a difficult job, especially with three of our biggest clubs out of the top division.

“So you need to sell the brand on 42 clubs, not 12, and you need to sell it on the whole nation. You need someone who buys into that.

“It’s difficult because we have a devolution debate – are UK wide companies wanting to get into that debate by getting into football?

“You have issues with tarnished goods – clubs who can’t manage themselves. That effect is still there. The product is not good. But there’s a lot more sense being talked and it’s out of necessity. Setbacks are opportunities.

“The SPFL will have to adjust their TV policy, for example, and if that’s what the fan wants? You’ll have to give them Hearts v Rangers not St Johnstone v Ross County.

“Do what the customer wants.”

County chief's free bus brainwave

ROY MACGREGOR is set to offer Ross County fans free travel to ALL away games next season.

The Dingwall club’s chairman is determined to make the Highland side’s games the best fan experience in the country.

And he is ready to get radical with his ideas as he tries to find new ways to engage with both home AND away supports.

The energy magnate, who employs 4500 with his Highlands-based business, said: “We want to do a lot of stuff this year. I’m probalby going to go free buses for our away support.

“I’m also going to create a matchday experience outside the ground like they do at Man City, I want people at the ground at 1230,

“The climate doesn’t help but you can still do it, still make it about more than just the football.

“I was up at the club this morning and I put up a suggestion that we gave all away supporters a free pie!

“And the arguments against were fair. How do you manage 2500 Celtic fans coming for a half time pie? If you only do it for clubs outside of Celtic, Abedeen and Inverness, you’re discriminating. Youre discriminating against your home support as well.

“But we’ll keep coming up with ideas to make ourselves better.

“Look at our away end just now - we thank the away support for coming to our ground. On our tea huts, we have the badges of the away support and scarves in their colours. They’re wee things which value the supporter coming from another club. They pay to get in and they’ve spent money getting there, Value that person.

“We saw it on social media last year, the number of people who noticed we thanked them, it’s nothing to say thanks.”

MacGregor has also cleverly adjusted their policy on free admission for kids.

he said: “We had under 12s go free - now we charge £25 but give them a free strip. I’m giving them it for nothing but theyre taking my brand out there.

“Then hopefully we have fewer Rangers and Celtic strips because two clubs here can influence this area.

“We want kids to support us, we want them to catch the bug the way I id when I was 10.”

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fine-n-dandy Grand Master

fine-n-dandy

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He wants ALL locals to follow their club & not go following the minky twins & wants a nice family club.

 

We need more people like him in the game & whilst he respects & will treat away fans well, I think he would also be one that supports the idea of stopping the Weegie cunts pedaling their fkn merchandise in Sports shops all around the Country to glory hunting scum type "fans"

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caledonia Mentor

caledonia

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Strathclyde police were always the worst.

Was in the queens bar in George square at one game years back and just ordered a round when Glasgows finest stormed in and cleared the place

Really heavy handed because there was trouble (no trouble unless it happened long before we got there) we never got back in and they more or less manhandled us up the street despite us going in the opposite direction

same at the grounds treated like shit

 

We were treated the same way when the dons played Ipswitch in Europe its was as if we had no right to be there and again treated like cattle

 

these were two examples even before we got to the ground

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fine-n-dandy Grand Master

fine-n-dandy

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Was in the queens bar in George square at one game years back and just ordered a round when Glasgows finest stormed in and cleared the place

Really heavy handed because there was trouble (no trouble unless it happened long before we got there) we never got back in and they more or less manhandled us up the street despite us going in the opposite direction

same at the grounds treated like shit

 

We were treated the same way when the dons played Ipswitch in Europe its was as if we had no right to be there and again treated like cattle

 

these were two examples even before we got to the ground

ACAB!

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Was in the queens bar in George square at one game years back and just ordered a round when Glasgows finest stormed in and cleared the place

Really heavy handed because there was trouble (no trouble unless it happened long before we got there) we never got back in and they more or less manhandled us up the street despite us going in the opposite direction

same at the grounds treated like shit

 

We were treated the same way when the dons played Ipswitch in Europe its was as if we had no right to be there and again treated like cattle

 

these were two examples even before we got to the ground

Interesting on Ipswich. We had no trouble there at all and had a great time.

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