You have previously defended Ulster fans when they have been accused of inappropriate or unsavory behaviour. Was it an own-goal then to make accusations at the press conference announcing Mark McCall’s resignation?
As you have said, I have always defended our supporters when they have been incorrectly accused, as has been proven, but in the 24 hour period before Mark’s resignation and the subsequent press conference, 10 hours after he resigned, there was absolutely no doubt in Mark’s mind that a very small number of people had made his life extremely miserable. This was to the level that I was extremely concerned about him and his health, and I don’t believe it is right for anyone to have to go through that. As well as incidents at Ravenhill, when you can’t go to your child’s mini-rugby tournament, or your wife picking a child up from school has people being extremely rude, I don’t think that’s right. At the press conference which lasted 40-45 minutes, there were two sound-bites taken for TV and out of 45 minutes, with seven camera crews and 20 plus journalists, it was misconstrued. We are very lucky to have the best supporters, the liveliest supporters and in many ways the most knowledgeable supporters, in the UK or even northern hemisphere rugby, but I felt that to put anybody under that severe
pressure was wrong, and if you look at the transcripts of the press conference, as I have done, they will prove that they were not aimed at the supporters in general, but at a small number who felt that there was need to abuse Mark. If comments from me caused offence, they certainly were not aimed in any way, shape or form at Ulster’s great supporters, just a few people who I felt had behaved in a way beyond what was necessary.
I think it would have been wrong to hide from things. The easiest thing would have been to put out a press release saying Mark McCall had resigned, full stop and walk away from it. I don’t shirk my responsibilities and I think it’s important to front up, and that’s what I did. I am truly sorry if it offended people. It was not intended to do that, but if I have to do it again and front up, I will. As a paid employee, I will do my job, and that includes facing the press. If you noted, when Steve McClaren was sacked as England football coach, there were nine people at the top table and Brian Barwick was sitting at the far end and didn’t answer a single question. If you are under pressure, question after question, by yourself, it is very difficult. Even if there are two answering, it gives a chance to gather thoughts in between, and maybe even come back on a
previous question, to lessen the chance of being misquoted or misrepresented. In our situation, that wasn’t possible, I was on my own, as the other people who would have been there were at a meeting in Dublin.

It has been presented in some quarters, at least to a degree, that it was the abuse of Mark that lead to his resignation, more so than performances or results. Is that fair?
At the end of the day, Mark, as a very, very proud Ulsterman, wasn’t happy with where the team were, in terms of results and he felt he couldn’t go on. The emotional side of that decision was undoubtedly affected by comments that were made to him, but he would probably have resigned anyway.

Update on Ravenhill Redevelopment?
Planning permission finally came through for a two-phase programme – the terrace side
will be done first but the carpark end cannot be done until the terrace is fully completed and operational. The biggest issue for us is that we must look at Ravenhill redevelopment alongside player costs. The IRFU have not increased our player budget for 5 years now, and more and more costs are thrown back on all the provinces to pay. We have to look at our team and, if we want to employ a world class tighthead, or a world class this or world class that, that will cost us a substantial amount of money. If you have seen in the press, the costs for example for Latham were £260k basic, but when you add on agent’s fees, accommodation, car, flights, healthcare package and so on, we’re talking of £350k per year. If we want to bring players of that calibre in, as the supporters want us to, we have to balance the players and development costs. The
proposal is that money goes to Phase 1, the Terrace development, but also money into “the player pot” to bring a player or two of substance in next year. Phase 1 scrapes off the top 20% of the terrace, and puts in a 600 seated area, large bar and restaurant, boxes and of course the roof. If we are to move forward, we won’t have benefactors like English clubs, but we could have a healthy buy-in by the private sector here, buying in as “Patrons” or members of “The Platinum Club”, and that will bring in money to develop the team further. The tender process will start in February, and after we have the government funding drawn down, building will start from November 08 and be completed by September 09. Many people were of the impression that once planning permission came through a couple of months ago, it would be full steam ahead. Clearly this is not the case. It is a 16 month programme – that’s finalising drawings, tender process, getting builder on site and actually completing the build. From a cash flow point of view, you want to complete at the start of a season. Had we started a couple of months ago, we could have finished in June (09) and had 3 months of it sitting idle with no revenue coming in and extra costs, so the timing is very important.

Effects of redevelopment on capacity?
It reduces capacity by about 400. Depending on how the team is performing, how the fans are responding, and obviously ticket sales, we would look to address that. The Memorial Stand was brought in because of our sales of stand tickets last year and ERC demands meant we didn’t have enough space to satisfy all seating requirements. If necessary we could put something similar in next season again. You have “signed up” to what appears to be a minimum commitment of probably three matches per year at a proposed Maze Stadium. That’s it exactly. The only actual option on the table at the moment is the Maze. There has been talk for a long, long time of Belfast City Council putting forward another option, but for now, the Maze is the only option there. We have to generate more money; now if we stay here for every single game, the only way we can do that is to charge more and more and more for the seats or the slot to stand in, and if it’s too much, people just walk away. Now that the Maze is the only option, there is no doubt that these are state-of-the-art facilities, and we got a lot of changes that we asked for. The design is a three tier design. We have got the capacity of the bottom bowl of the stadium reduced from 25000 to 18000; we got the Box levels that were up in Levels 2 & 3, brought down to Level 1, so with a crowd of 18000, we could have that self contained on one level for rugby, and we also got a lot of technical changes made that we wanted. We have also negotiated a substantial decrease in rent. Only a quarter of the crowd at Ravenhill sit and if you charge the same price for a seat here, to sit at the Maze, we could make £75-80k more per match, simply because everyone would be seated. Even with rent which would be about £30k per match, we would still be £40- 50k better off. That is at today’s prices in about 4 years time, so there is no need for astronomical price increases.

Is a stadium in Belfast likely?
Belfast City & Drivers Jonas are now putting together a business plan. We have been asking for one for the last two and a half years and there have been lots of pretty pictures they’ve put in the papers but nothing of substance. For the first time we’ve met with a company who seem to be full-on focused on producing a business plan and we await that to see what it produces.

Is that putting you in a difficult position to consider it? If something better came up in Belfast are you already committed to the Maze?
We are committed to the Maze, because it is the only thing that’s there. The difficulty here for all of us is we are in a country where we had politicians who when they were effectively in opposition, threw stones. Now they are in power, they have to show some leadership here, and I believe it is unfair on Sport to be put in a position where we have to decide. There is one option for us, which is the Maze. We had to fight for two years to get planning permission here. There was no political support whatsoever in that period of time, so if rugby grows, there is no future here, unfortunately. We have to look at what is there and the Maze is the only thing there now, but in six months time if there’s something different there, even if we went to the Maze for our three big games a year, if someone built a 15000 capacity stadium in Belfast for rugby and soccer to play at, I’d play at it. You mention the need to develop the team, and bringing in top class players, just how easy (or difficult) is it to attract them to Ulster? After Simon Best’s illness at the RWC, for anyone asking “why the h*ll didn’t you bring in a top quality replacement”, we spoke to EVERY “tier one” prop at the World Cup, or their agent – EVERY one! Not one was available.

Are there restrictions placed on certain positions? Do the IRFU insist on certain positions (e.g. 1, 3, 10) being Irish qualified?
You have hit the three nails on the head, but because of Simon’s condition, the IRFU gave us the green light to go ahead. No one we spoke to would have been Irish qualified, but if they fitted the bill, we could have signed them. Literally there was no one available, apart from a couple whose agents thought they were good, but our own people didn’t rate. They could have been the next Joeli, Leopoldo or Andy Kershaw, but there was absolutely no point in bringing in someone who was no better than Declan Fitzpatrick.

Can you shed any light on the running of Ulster Rugby, including your own role as Chief executive?
There is a governance review taking place in all the provinces to reach the most appropriate structure to run a multi-million pound business and the staffing model and volunteer model that goes around that. The current Constitution of the Ulster Branch, or any of the Branches, was set up way in advance of a professional Union even existing and we’re trying to run a game with a committee amongst the other twenty-odd committees that look after various aspects of the game. There are top quality people in there, but by the very nature that, apart from myself, they are all volunteers, and the fact that we have to go through (sometimes) 4 or 5 tiers of decisions, it can make things very slow. Hopefully the Governance Review will come out, and it will redefine roles of volunteers, and redefine roles and responsibilities of myself, and we can move forward in a more transparent way. The review will take place in January and February, and hopefully there will be a report in March. It will be up to the Branch AGM in June to say “yes, we like what’s reported” or not! Will that report be made public? We’ll have to wait, I can’t answer that, it depends on the Branch. The way the Branch is constituted, the clubs put forward representatives to the Branch, and the Branch has the final say on everything. It may be that they will have to give up a degree of control to put a more streamlined structure in place, or they might decide they want to maintain that control.

What is your view of the Supporters Club?
The Supporters Club is the only real conduit for us to work through. Last season, I think I went to virtually every meeting they had, but this year, because of circumstances, I’ve only been to two meetings, but I am happy to speak to you, Iain Campbell, or whoever else they suggest. I think a supporters club should do two things, one, it’s a sounding board for opinion. Messageboards to a degree have lost their ability to be a sounding board. In the past, I looked at issues that were raised on the Ulster messageboard, and it made me aware of some of what the fans wanted addressed. It gave me good ideasof things to try and it was a help. Unfortunately that is now much less the case. Sounding boards give people the chance to ask, why aren’t you doing this, or why aren’t you doing that? Things like this publication, “STAND UP” give people the chance to ask those questions. I think the second purpose should be to help promote Ulster Rugby.

We are perhaps inexperienced in this field, but what are your thoughts on the bursary scheme we now have in place to help Academy players? How are the Academy players financed?
It’s great, because to that kid (Mark McCrae) personally, money is very important, it’s not just some “silver spoon” guy getting 2 Grand. It will be very useful to him in furthering his rugby. There are 3 levels within the Academy. The first two levels receive no money. They receive career and tuition support, perhaps modularisation of courses if necessary, nutritional advice and help with gym & technical work, and access to experts, but that’s really all they get. It’s only at the top level of the Academy, usually about 6-8 people who get a grant of between £2k and £5k per annum. Mark is in this top band, but not getting the top end of the grant. Niall O’Connor would be in this category too, and these guys are only getting £3-4k per year. They are all more like full time pros, with their courses fully modularised. We arrange this with their colleges to facilitate their rugby

Any New Year message to the fans?
I can guarantee you that it is hurting me and everyone here at Ravenhill, every bit as much as it is hurting you out on the terraces on the promenade & in the stands. We have to get our season turned around, we cannot continue the way we are. Things may appear to move slowly, but we are working as hard as we can. We will have a new coach in the New Year; the stadium issue is going to move forward; we do understand the need to develop the team and hopefully we will see a turnaround in our results.