Ross Morrison opens up on watching Inverness 'go down pan', battery farm and why Scot Gardiner persecution angers him

The commitment to an economy of words seemed grimly fitting at this hour of financial reckoning. Without a sugar daddy on the scale of Ross County’s Roy MacGregor, it’s hard making a professional football club work in the northern fringes of Scotland senior clubs’ landscape.

One only needs ask Morrison, who stepped down in the summer having invested as much as £2 million in a club now on the brink of oblivion. The statement that emerged in the early afternoon on Thursday did not leave much room for optimism: “The Board can confirm that the time for any interested parties to offer for the club has come and gone. We are currently looking at our position and will make an announcement in the coming days.”

The snippet of news, while expected, has been greeted with anger and no little dismay in some quarters, including Morrison’s Monikie base near Dundee. There’s also been tears. The pain is not purely financial. “It’s an emotional thing watching your football club go down the pan,” he says. Morrison, who was born in Wick and grew up in the Highlands, wears his heart on his sleeve in the form of a club crest tattoo near his left shoulder. It dates back to better times – the countdown to the 2015 Scottish Cup final, when Inverness beat Falkirk 1-0.

“I was on holiday with my pal, a Ross County fan,” he explains. “There was a possibility drink was involved at the time. And of course, we (Inverness) won it. I went into the place in Dundee, the tattooist says our next appointment is…..7 March. That would have been July. I walked out the door and she called back: ‘Are you available tomorrow? we have just had a cancellation.’ So I went back in.”

If only business was as good for mid-ranked football clubs as it clearly is for tattooists. Morrison and his cohorts tried everything to turn a profit, something he says has happened only five times in the club’s 30 year-history. It’s meant resorting to imaginative efforts to raise funds, including the now notorious battery farm scheme. An agreement with Norwegian renewables company Statkraft to use the club’s north car park as a park and ride also broke down. That would have been worth around £350,000 a year to the club.

The battery farm collapse earlier this year was even more shattering since it was worth a potential £3.4 million. The club initially gained planning permission but it was overturned on appeal, with another appeal pending. Morrison and two fellow former directors now own the ground, for what it’s worth now, with the money paid having kept the lights on at Inverness for a bit longer.

“We had to buy it,” Morrison explains. “It was worth nothing. The club did not have that money so we would have lost the deal completely. Another things was, the club needed money. It was desperate for cash. We had to do something. It was minuted in the board meetings, this is what we are going to do. We took a valuation, we paid a huge amount more than the valuation was. We had to pay it, otherwise the club would be down by now.”

There’s been a request to gift the land back to the club in its darkest hour. Morrison will see how things play out first before deciding what to do. “Would we put money into the club once we get the thing sold? If we make a huge amount of money on it, possibly yes,” he says. “But when is that going to be? Six months? Eight months? A year, I don’t know. There’s a slight glimmer of hope we might get something out of it. But that won’t save the day because the day is now.”

The last straw for Morrison personally was the reaction to the plan to share a training ground with Kelty Hearts, which was announced and then quickly scrapped when the vehement nature of fans’ opposition to the cost-cutting move became clear. Morrison had backed former CEO Scot Gardiner’s idea, as had the board.

“And then they changed their mind,” says Morrison. “It’s up to them, if they want to change their mind that was their prerogative. Anyway, it’s water under the bridge now.”

It certainly is. The current Inverness board, along with local businessman and consultant Alan Savage, have pulled up the drawbridge. Reports of another Highland businessman being prepared to step in, the third seven-figure offer that’s apparently been made, had raised hopes.

Administration, a 15-point deduction and, eventually, League Two now looks inevitable. Morrison is aghast at the seeming rush to put the club into such a situation.

He is also angered by the persecution of Gardiner, who he points out did nothing without the say so of the board, him included. There’s plenty of blood on the tracks, most of it the former CEO’s. “Scot has been victimised horrendously,” says Morrison. “There is a board of directors there. If they didn’t like him, they could have sacked him.”

As for Morrison, he tries not to think about what’s gone, including what looks like a portion of his own personal wealth. Even up to this most recent deadline, and despite no longer having an active role in the club, he was courting investors, with one Tayside-based businessman having shown interest. “We shook hands, but I have just not been able to get him to the table,” he says. “It’s not over ‘til it’s over.” Despairingly, it might be now.