Chairman's love affair with County founded on trust and fairness

Meeting him for the first time does not change that perception. Much like a well-regarded single malt, the 60-year-old MacGregor is a satisfying blend of old-school Highland values and modern entrepreneurial skills. He insists it is the valuation of his company, Global Energy Systems, and not his personal wealth, which has put his family into the Rich List. He founded GES eight years ago when his wife, Morag, asked him to start a business to dissuade engineer son Donald from emigrating to Australia. It started as two men 
and an office in Aberdeen; now it is an international company with premises dotted around the world.

MacGregor has made a success of most of his ventures, and helping to guide County from the Highland League to fifth place in the top flight is no exception. He is careful to credit those who share his journey, but he creates the environment which allows his employees to flourish. In return he asks that 
they share his core values; these, he asserts, allow them to flourish and reach their full potential. "It is about 360 degrees trust, which means fairness," he explains. "You be fair with your customers, suppliers, staff, stakeholders and you pay your taxes. You support people's personal lives as well as their business lives."

His successes since breaking away from the family retail business in the 1980s are testament to his philosophy. Global Energy is just the latest, and he says: "Right place, right time." It's a typically modest statement given that the company's short history coincides with the worst economic conditions of modern times.

MacGregor's love for County began on a cold day in 1966. With Celtic soon to win the European Cup, Rangers were on the decline, but their Scottish Cup tie at Victoria Park generated huge excitement. 
"It had been postponed four or five times, so it was played on a Monday afternoon," MacGregor recalls. "The anticipation was enormous and all the kids got off school."

The chairman was 12 at the time – since you ask the score was 2-0 to the visitors – and later spent a season as an aspiring midfielder with the club before moving to Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, where he gained his marketing and business management degree. He was also a scratch golfer at the age of 14, but insists he was not good enough to make a decent living at either sport.

An instructive meeting with a giant of the food retail business, Jimmy Gulliver, in the mid-1980s changed the direction of his life. MacGregor and his father were invited to London to meet the flamboyant businessman, who owned the Fine Fare supermarket chain and wanted to purchase the MacGregors' Ross-shire shops. After the pleasantries, the father was told by his fellow Scot: "Alistair, you can either sell me your business or I'll come and take it." The son was incensed, and made his feelings known on the plane home. "My father, who had been in the business for 45 years, told me that Gulliver was only telling us the truth," 
he recalls. "What the man was saying was that he could set up a supermarket in opposition to us."

The business was sold, but the premises retained, and MacGregor embarked on the first of his ventures servicing the oil industry. He is now a major player in that field, and the beneficiary of his commercial acumen have been County. In 1994, one of his first tasks after joining the board was to persuade Scotland's senior clubs County were worthy of joining them. It was a certainty that one of the two places would go to newly-merged neighbours Inverness Caledonian Thistle but, despite the resistance of David Murray, it was the Highlanders, and not Gala Fairydean, who got the second.

This was a doubly satisfying outcome for MacGregor and the other County officials involved in the lobbying because for long enough the Scottish Football League had turned its back Highland League clubs. How splendid, then, that neither Inverness nor Ross County were in the SFL in the last season of its existence – they had outgrown the organisation, finishing respectively fourth and fifth in the SPL.

If not quite meteoric, the rise 
and rise of Ross County has been unwavering. MacGregor, who funded the substantial upgrading of the stadium to meet SPL requirements but doesn't subsidise the club in its day-to-day running, cites three experiences – two positive, one negative – which have influenced his stewardship of the club.

The first was a fact-finding visit to Ipswich Town, where then-chairman David Sheepshanks opened his eyes to how hugely a club could be empowered by reaching out to its community. The second was the vision of Fergus McCann, who he met by chance and spent several hours with, on the very day he purchased Celtic.

"He was a difficult wee guy," says MacGregor pithily, "but I got inside his bonnet and he taught me a lot."

The negative experience had an equally profound effect. "We went to Greenock Morton one Saturday afternoon for a Scottish Cup tie," the chairman recalls. "They had been an icon in Scottish football, but the shipyards across the road had been shut for 20-30 years. The customers, the guys who worked in the yards, had moved but the club hadn't taken any account of this. They had taken their eye off the customer and the size of the crowd reflected that."

In MacGregor's view the customer is king, whether it be one of the businesses he supplies at GES or the Ross County fan. It explains why the club sells an astonishing 3000 season tickets and has an average home attendance of 4500 in a town of 
just 6000 people. County's on-field success owes much to the strong bond between the chairman and his director of football and manager. George and Derek Adams are also religious men, although not in the same church as MacGregor. 
To get one staunch believer in a professional football club is unusual; three is a real collector's item.

MacGregor's beliefs allowed him to turn the other cheek when some of his fellow SPL chairmen tried to portray him as a country hick during the acrimonious league reconstruction discussions. 
A less magnanimous character might have questioned his critics' own credentials, but he says: 
"I fought pretty hard on league reconstruction and I fought it for 
the fans. I couldn't vote against my supporters because I would have been selling them down the river.

"Right to the eleventh and a half hour they [the other chairmen] thought I would change my mind but it was never going to happen. 
We have now actually got what is right, one league body, fairer distribution, play-offs and a system where other teams can come into the league. There has been some pain along the way, and although it should have been done quicker, we got there in the end."