“Inflammatory” – how Rangers’ board did at this year’s AGM | OneFootball

With Rangers’ AGM done and dusted, Ibrox Noise wanted to take a different slant on it compared with the ones that are doing the rounds in the media today. We wanted to look at the performances of Stewart Robertson, Douglas Park, James Bisgrove and Ross Wilson, given they are clearly the most prominent board members (regardless of which side of the club they are directors on) and their word carries more weight than the majority.

Stewart Robertson:

Struggled quite a lot with some of the questioning, particularly placating the legendary Henry who, as a disabled fan, was asking why MyGers is essentially a shambles in how it deals with both disabled ticketing and ticketing in general. The overriding impression we took from Robertson was he really, more than most, didn’t want to be there, and was forced into conjecture for some of the answers, often failing to actually do so.

Douglas Park:

Reserved as he will always be, Park isn’t a big mouth like his predecessor and avoids the limelight where possible. He came across with humility regardless of what we think of his policies and performance as chairman the past year+, and does generally act with a bit more dignity than the former chairman did. This far from excuses most of his policies since March 2021 and he barely really said anything overall.

James Bisgrove:

Not a Rangers fan, not emotionally involved and made no attempt to deny Henry’s claim he was going to leave if MyGers failed, but did come across neutrally, trying to answer questions with objectivity and not let his own emotions of performance criticism get in the way. He did ok and came out looking alright.

Ross Wilson:

This is the one that will make the headlines – the Director of Football knew he would get grilled more than most, and he was in fully combative mode, but unfortunately for him, he came across as arrogant, self-righteous, and used far too much inflammatory language to provoke the audience.

Dismissing the Bacuna fee claim as ‘nonsense’ is unacceptable language for a board member to use. He can call a claim ‘mistaken’ or ‘untrue’ but should never deride it. Instead, Wilson seemed to want to tell the audience how wrong they all were, and spent a lot of time shaking his head in self-indignant rage while pouting and uncomfortably shuffling his hands.

In short, Wilson came out of this one looking really bad, not strictly just for the answers he gave, but the contempt with which he treated the questions.

Now, there is a caveat; the unnamed gentleman who slaughtered his signing policy did himself use inflammatory language to attack Wilson’s performance, and the SD wasn’t taking it lying down – but that’s the problem. His job is not to rise to bait, but to calmly explain his case, and he failed to do that without resorting to mockery.

Wilson is deeply unpopular among Rangers fans, and this performance will have done nothing to quell the low esteem in which he is held. A little humility would have helped, but Ross Wilson was determined to tell the world they’re wrong and he’s right, and they’re frankly all a bit stupid for thinking anything else.

And that was a bit of the AGM that was.