STEWART REGAN

This is something that Stewart is rightly pleased about. As always thanks to Stewart for sparing the time and for his usual full and frank responses.

 

I started by passing on the good wishes and congratulations that seemed to be a theme of many of your posts and emails. In addition to asking questions many of you have been full of praise for the role that Stewart Regan has played in Yorkshire’s winter recovery and off-field revival.

 

It’s always difficult when you start in a new job. There are always a lot of things to do and it can be difficult to know where to start. Coming into Yorkshire I didn’t think that I personally would have to get involved in the cricket side quite as soon as I did. I’m not a cricket person, I don’t know a great deal about the game and don’t profess to be an expert, not compared to many of our members and many of the people associated with the club, but needs must. We have got involved in the cricket side, we’ve got Geoffrey Boycott involved and we’ve consulted people like Darren Lehmann, Michael Vaughan, so we’ve had a fair involvement and I’d like to think that a lot of the cricketing matters are now behind us.

 

We’ve got one small matter of Anthony McGrath to try and resolve and it would be fantastic if we could convince Anthony that his future lays at Headingley Carnegie. If for whatever reason that doesn’t come off I still feel pretty confident that we can hit the ground running come the start of the season and give a good account of ourselves.

 

What’s the latest on Anthony McGrath and how likely do you think it is that he will stay?

 

I think Anthony thought that between October and now it would all been signed, sealed and delivered and he could have left the club, made a fresh start elsewhere and moved on. Unfortunately it’s not that easy. He’s got a three year contract and his registration sits with the Yorkshire County Cricket Club and we’re not just going to let him walk away from that. We’ve made that point to him and his agent on several occasions. We’re now into February, only a month away from pre-season starting and it’s still not resolved. We’ve made it perfectly clear that he can’t talk to any other club, his agent can’t talk to any other club and as far as we’re concerned he’s still a Yorkshire player.

 

What I don’t want to do is get into a dispute with Anthony and get into a situation where the club and him are not in dialogue. We’ve still been speaking and talking about all the good stuff that’s going on here, new players coming in, new fitness regime, the lads are off to La Manga for a pre-season trip and I’d like to think that he’s starting to see a much more positive environment being created. Given that was one of his biggest concerns I would like to think he will have second thoughts and decide to stay. If he does it will be fantastic.

 

Is there any sign of that? From a fans perspective we obviously only hear your side of this.

 

Anthony has relied heavily on his agent to handle the matter for him. My own view of agents is not a particularly good one. I had a lot of dealings with them when I was at the Football League as well. Quite frankly I believe that they are taking money out of the game. It’s money that would otherwise go to the player or the club and at a time when cricket is strapped for cash I think it is unreasonable for agents to be taking money. Agents only get paid when transactions happen and in Anthony’s case the last thing we want is for a transaction to happen and for him to move to another club. That’s probably why you haven’t heard a great deal from Anthony himself, but our perspective is very clear – we want him, we’d like him to be part of the plans and if there’s any way to turn it round we’ll do whatever we can. It’s certainly not dead in the water yet.

 

Moving on to the directors jobs – what stage are you at with those?

 

We’re start interviewing this afternoon (7^th). We’ve got a number of candidates, both at home and abroad. Some of the candidates are being interviewed abroad by my colleagues and the rest of them are being interviewed here by myself and the chairman. We’re trying to apply the same process and we’re interviewing to a very strict set of criteria which will be adhered to by both sets of interviewers. Then we’ll get down to our final shortlist and make a decision. We expect the interviewing to be finished by the end of next week and then we’ll have a decision to make which will involve a board meeting and a discussion about who our preferred candidate is.

 

When the announcements are made very much depends on the person in question. Given their circumstances we’ll either announce it very quickly and get him to start before the start of the season, or if there are any confidential issues that have to be handled then they will have to be dealt with first before we go public and I’m sure everyone will understand the circumstances that we are dealing with here. All of our candidates have got different circumstances as you would expect. Some of them are in high profile positions, others involved in cricket in a different role. All of them have got different notice periods so we’re going to have to work with them on that.

 

We’ve been doing a poll of The Corridor where readers have voted for their favourites. The candidates we included were obviously taken from all of the rumour and speculation. Did you see the names on that and who did you vote for?

 

I did see the names actually, but didn’t see the final figures.

 

Tom Moody was the winner of the poll.

 

Yeah, I saw that when his name became available he got votes. It’s interesting to see the names associated with the job. My won view would be that Tom Moody would be putting his hat in the ring for the England job, if it becomes available.

 

We have cast the net really wide, we have got some fantastic candidates, some really high profile people and a number of individuals, any one of who could do the job and I think the fans will be chuffed to bits when they see where it ends up.

 

Will any former or current player be involved in the selection process?

 

Yes. There is a panel that’s been put together (a kind of sub-committee of the board) who are conducting the interviews. At some stage, probably the final stage, that will include Geoffrey Boycott.

 

Geoffrey Boycott’s name has cropped up a lot recently. How much of a role has he played at the club?

 

Given the make up of the board there isn’t a lot of cricket experience. Colin Graves has played a bit of cricket in local league to quite a high standard and is a big cricket fan. But he is a very entrepreneurial business man at the end of the day who has grown and empire of convenience stores from one or two up to 1400 and made a lot of money from doing so. We’ve got an ex-lawyer, a finance man, one of the members of Leeds City Council and myself with a sales and marketing background. So the makeup doesn’t include a great deal of cricket knowledge so we have relied on Geoffrey to provide his input. Equally we’ve also used people from around the game who have got an understanding of what’s going on here and now. People like Darren Lehmann, Matthew Hoggard and Michael Vaughan who are familiar with the international scene. Darren has obviously been very helpful with overseas players and recommended the Matthew Elliott signing. We have tried given the makeup of the board to use as many people as we can.

 

Geoffrey has actually been on the board and I think it’s been an interesting few months for him and the board. I think it’s the first time he’s been in a corporate environment and I think he found it quite difficult coming to terms with behaving like a board director in a meeting. Equally we found having someone like Geoffrey on the board quite unusual and quite challenging because he shoots from the hip and tells it how it is and you get in to some fairly lengthy debates and discussions, all of which are very frank and very open. I think it’s been quite interesting to see how that’s evolved because Geoffrey’s behaviour now in the meetings is very different to how it was at the start of last year. He has been more and more helpful over the last few months to me personally. He was instrumental in making the initial contact with Younus Khan. He also had a look at Jacques Rudolph over in South Africa, met the player, talked to him and was able to look him in the eyes and get a sense if he really was up for Yorkshire and a long-term commitment. We’ve been pleasantly surprised at just how passionate in a board director role Geoffrey is to get this club on track again. He’s determined that the cricket side in particular is going to succeed.

 

That attitude in the board room might be different must also be quite healthy.

 

Yeah it is. Whilst we’ve been running the club as a business, and I think even before I came the director’s were probably quite internally focussed because of all the financial difficulties the club were going through – the need to buy the ground, the need to get everything stabilised and maybe the cricket wasn’t as high priority as it should have been. I think that’s changed now. We’ve got the ground, we’ve got the finances stabilised, we’re just about to announce some very healthy financial results for 2006 and we’ve got some very exciting plans for the future for the development of the ground. The cricket side is the product that you are selling and if the product isn’t good people won’t buy it and that effects membership, ticket sales, merchandise sales and the business generally, so you’ve got to get your product right. That’s why having someone like Geoffrey challenging you and dropping pebbles into the pond to make people think is quite healthy and it has encouraged a lot more cricket discussion that we would probably have had.

 

Are there any more planned signings?

 

There are no more planned signings. We’re just looking at what is going on out there. Obviously the McGrath situation is not finalised yet and we’ll be doing everything we can to keep Anthony. There are a number of factors at play here. One is our cricket salary budget which is not open ended and we’re not just going to keep signing players. If Anthony stays it will be great news but there’s a cost to that. We’ve signed Jacques Rudolph and there’s a cost attached to that and equally there’s a penalty involved in signing Jacques because we lose the ECB money for the development of a home grown player which will cost us just under £30,000. So we’ve got to keep an eye on the finances. That said we’re always interested in opportunistic moves and if the opportunity arises as a board we would be quite keen to take it. We’ll watch with interest what Goughie’s position is and we’ll have a look and see who else is out there. I’ve said that come the start of the season I’d be happy with the squad we’ve got and I think that’s the boards view generally.

 

So there isn’t a £130k cheque in your top with Darren Gough’s name on it?

 

(laughs) I wish there was. Bearing in mind we lost £1.2 million last year the profits in county cricket are not particularly huge and a £130k cheque is a massive outlay for a club of this ilk.

 

Are there anymore roadshows planned? People in the more removed parts of Yorkshire seem to have really appreciated the membership events.

 

There are none planned but you are not the first person to say that. We have received some really positive feedback about the fact that the club took the time and effort to get out and talk to members and fans. I’d like to think that rather than have a roadshow with a specific agenda like membership we could have a more open forum. Myself, coaching staff and board members could attend and I think we will do that. As people can imagine there have been one or two things to deal with, but we will get around to it.

 

Which role do you most enjoy doing at the club?

 

My role is so varied that I am doing different things all the time which is what makes it such a great job. If you look at all of the functions that the club gets involved in, whether it be finance, sales and marketing, IT, the cricket, the operations, then I’m involved in some shape or form in all of it. Ideally I’d like to pass over everything to do with cricket to the director of cricket operations and the director of professional cricket.

 

That was another question actually – do you look forward to a day when you can become a more traditional chief executive?

 

(laughs) Yeah, that would be nice. I look forward to being able to have full faith and trust in the two new directors that we will bring to the club. They will be the voice of cricket at the club. I don’t profess to understand it as much as most and therefore my involvement in it has really been as a facilitator over the last few months to get us through a difficult period. I enjoy the involvement in rebuilding this club as a great brand and that’s the marketer coming out in me. The white rose of Yorkshire is the most famous emblems or icons in worldwide cricket. It’s been unexploited and underdeveloped in the last few years and my challenge is to put that right back at the top of county cricket and attract new investment into the club, either through company involvement and advertising or through financial investment to allow us to grow. It would be really nice at some point if some Roman Abramovich type character suddenly develops a fantastic interest in UK cricket and selects Yorkshire because of its heritage, profile and capability of its management team and we can all live in hope.

 

In Part Two of the interview Stewart answers questions on the state of the domestic game, the future ground developments and whether Yorkshire will ever put a team out on to the field made up of eleven Yorkshire born players…

 

Thank you to Stewart for his time. Please keep an eye on this site for details of the next ‘Regan Responds’ where you will have your chance to submit questions to Yorkshire’s chief executive.

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