“The fans are the most important people here, not the clubs. I think it takes something away from the product if you’re selling a season-ticket for 22 games.
“We have around 3,000 season ticket holders right now. It’s difficult to say what it could become.”
Celtic’s Champions League progress aside, Ross County have produced the most romantic and uplifting success story in Scottish football during a troubled campaign.
Derek Adams’s Scottish Premier League new boys have harvested 27 points from an 11-game unbeaten sequence stretching back to Boxing Day, a feat which has left them with a fighting chance of claiming a Europa League slot.
Yet, as MacGregor points out, the reconstruction plans currently on the table would prevent any other club from emulating that achievement.
“I just worry that we might be taking something away from the product by selling a season ticket for 22 games,” he said.
“Look at this season, where any club from two to 11 could move dramatically. We were at the bottom, 10th or 11th, and we’re now third.
“We’d have been out of it [under 12-12-18] so is that fair? In the last two games against Inverness and Celtic we’ve had sell-outs so I think it’s too early to make a break.”
MacGregor attended a meeting of all 12 members of the elite division at Hampden called to debate the new set-up and to run the rule over a draft copy of the rule book for the merged body.
“We need to watch we don’t jeopardise the whole of Scottish footballby making rash judgments,” he said.
“Things need to be very thought-out and calculated and the moretalking done the better. Why do people buy season tickets? It’s because it shows loyalty to their club.
“I’d bet a lot of season ticket holders don’t all go the matches. They might only go to half of the games but it’s their part ofbelonging to their club.
“The club belongs to them and they belong to the club. The season ticket is particularly for the middle aged, the older fan.
“I’m not here just from a Ross County point of view. I look wider than that.
“I am thinking about the fan who, for as long as I’ve been involved,has known what he’s getting when he buys his season ticket at the beginning of the season.
“Maybe some fans will accept that. Maybe I’m old fashioned and it’s time to move on. Maybe it’s time to have more pay-as-you-go rather than the season ticket.
“But it would good for fans of all clubs to have that debate.”
PFA Scotland helps avert Dunfermline strike
Fraser Wishart, the chief executive of PFA Scotland, has revealed how the players’ union persuaded the Dunfermline squad not to take strike action.
The troubled Fife club are on the brink of extinction, with discredited owner Gavin Masterton unable to meet tax bills and, when only a fraction of February’s wages were paid, players were prepared to down tools.
Wishart, though, claims that there will be no repeat of the threatened industrial action while the club’s supporters fight to keep it alive.
“There was a real danger that the game against Partick Thistle [on March 2] wouldn’t go ahead,” he said.
“I know the players were beginning to question whether they would receive any more money from the club, given its perilous situation, and whether they should put their livelihoods on the line.
“They were worried about getting injured which would put them out for four or five months and possibly prevent them from getting a club in the summer.
“We, as an association, spoke to a number of the players. I think they realise that they have to put their shoulder to the wheel here.
“At the moment there’s no danger of that happening again, now that the truth has come out and everyone is aware of the severity of the situation.
“The players are fully behind the club and, in particular, the fans in their efforts to save the club so they will continue to play and train as normally as they can until this situation is resolved one way or another.”
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