Ross County chairman Roy MacGregor details personal pain of Staggies’ relegation: ‘I couldn’t set foot in my own club for two weeks’
Roy MacGregor has revealed he could not return to Ross County’s stadium for weeks following their relegation from the Premiership.
It was almost a month ago that the Staggies lost out to Livingston in Dingwall, confirming that the Highlanders would drop down to the second tier for the 2025/26 campaign.
Having looked comfortable in the Premiership table as late in the season as March, it was a devastating blow for all involved.
The aftermath of relegation was intense behind the scenes. MacGregor, as the club’s long-serving chairman, and chief executive Steven Ferguson spent the next week analysing what went wrong, who was responsible, and how to move forward.
While it was eventually decided that Don Cowie would continue as manager, albeit with some changes to his backroom staff, that did not make the emotional process any easier for those at the top of the club.
“I couldn’t set foot in my own club for two weeks, it hurt so much,” MacGregor said.
“I felt I let down my own community. It was pretty poignant. It was like a death.
“I drove there twice and I couldn’t get out of my car. I’ve never experienced that in my life before, in however many years in business I’ve never been not able to come into the workplace.
“It was much worse than the previous relegation because, with 12 games to go, we were in a relatively good position. Somehow, we couldn’t get out of it.
“When you only get two or three points out of the last 12 games, people would be saying did the chairman, the chief executive not recognise six games in that they needed to intervene?
“We were living a wee bit on hope, knowing we had a pretty threadbare squad, with not a lot of room for change for Don.
“You need to go through that grieving. That hurt is good, but we’re past the hurt now and we’re moving on.”
While the main decision to be made in the wake of relegation was who would lead the team into next season, MacGregor and Ferguson also analysed their own roles in the setback.
The chairman even admitted he considered whether he wanted to continue in his role, or change how involved he was, but in the end a sense of duty to the Highlands was enough to keep him going.
MacGregor added: “I did (ask whether I wanted to keep going). It is not the club, it is my commitment to the Highlands that’s the thing.
“I’m trying to make people better. I’m trying to make people believe in themselves, and make them believe you can have a Highlands-based headquarters.
“That whole legacy thing is in the football club. It isn’t about letting myself down – I could go away tomorrow, I could fund the club and not go to the club and do it differently, but I’m wedded to the people. That’s the difficult thing.
“Without leadership, both Highland clubs, ourselves and Inverness, are probably at best Championship clubs, maybe lower level.
“Alan Savage has gone into Inverness, and you need leadership, you need people like that.
“I’m not a great one for fan ownership, as there can be challenges in how they operate. The clubs here will always need subsidy and that subsidy is not going to come from the fan.
“The support is going to come from the fan, but subsidy needs to come from people that believe in what they’re doing and are giving something back.”