WOMAN OF SUBSTANCE in the CORRIDORS OF POWER
Robertson is tasked with ensuring Saints can keep punching above their weight when times are tight
Compared to her peers, she flies so far below the radar she’s all but invisible.
Not that Kirsten Robertson cares. She’s happy to let the queens of the SPFL, Ann Budge at Hearts and Leeann Dempster at Hibs, f ly the flag for women of substance in Scottish football.
It doesn’t give her any less strength or power to do her job, nor any less ambition or determination to do it well.
That’s despite the fact she has been involved in running clubs in the top flight for longer than either.
But af ter two spel ls at Kilmarnock, the latter as chief executive, she’s having to stick her head above the parapet because the club she’s at now needs to stick its neck out even more.
St Johnstone have been accused of being the best-run part-time full-time club in the country.
The minimalist approach of self-styled benevolent dictator and chairman Steve Brown has kept them living within their means and Saints wear that as a break-even badge of honour.
After 11 straight years in the top f light and six seasons of top- six success, though, the Perth club now find themselves in a third season of stagnant crowds and bottom-six struggles.
Which has led Brown, for so long bullish and unbending since taking the reins from dad Geoff, to hand over autonomy for the day-to-day running of the club to his new head of football operations.
And after a month in the role, getting a feel for what’s missing, Robertson is ready to put her mark on McDiarmid Park.
Her mission is not simply to help manager Tommy Wright get things right on the park.
But she wants to get the entire club and their constituent community singing from top to bottom and doing it together.
On the surface, their decision to hand the Old Firm three stands for their next two visits to McDiarmid might f ly in the face of that theory, but it’s the kind of sensible pragmatism Robertson hopes will make a holistic difference.
She said: “It was a big step for Steve, taking a full step back from the running of the club and trusting it to me. And I think he’s a bit relieved, to be honest.
“Everyone is having to get used to some new ways and there will be lots of changes over the coming months. I like things to be done in a specific way so there will be some tweaks, some general housekeeping and new protocols and procedures, so everyone knows what everyone is doing all the time.
“It doesn’t have to be complicated for the sake of it in football. But we need to start showcasing why St Johnstone are such a brilliant club.
“They were always great to deal with as an opposition team.
“When you went there, you knew everyone would help you and, as an away team, I can tell you that doesn’t always happen. It’s why St Johnstone felt such a good fit for me.
“Steve and I spoke a lot over the years whether it was about SPL board meetings or other things where we had mutual interests.
“So we know what we have here and from what I’ve seen the interaction we have with the community is fabulous.
“But we don’t shout about it – and that needs to change.”
It won’t be the only thing. Robertson has come from a club at Rugby Park who put heavy emphasis on being part of the elite tranche in the ‘ Project Brave’ attempt to revive the country’s youth fortunes.
It was a financial and staffing commitment that Brown and St Johnstone eschewed.
“That’s definitely something we’ll be looking at,” she insisted.
“Ultimately we need to progress the player pathway but in relation to what was required from Project Brave, a lot needs looked at.
“We’re not that far off elite status and we have some great people working in the system so the issue is maybe more that the criteria need to be revisited by the SFA as well.
“There hasn’t been a review or a discussion about it since they were established.
“The thing is though, you can only spend what you have coming in – or slightly less hopefully. Our budget should be placed around ninth if you look at it as a league table.
“This season we spent a lot more to try to ensure a top-six return.
“The way we started the season, it didn’t quite work out that way, but progress has been made in the past few weeks and we’ll keep making it.
“One of the things we’re having to do, because the spend has increased and the core support hasn’t, is make sure we can use as many methods as we can to ensure
good supporter engagement. “It sounds so obvious but what I need to do at St Johnstone is what I have previously done at Kilmarnock.
“We must make sure we’re out in the schools, engaging everyone, getting more complimentary tickets out to more community groups, making the pre- match and half-time more of an experience than just drinking a Bovril and looking at your phone.
“It should be far more interactive and engaging. We want people to enjoy match day because a club can be so much more than the sum of its parts. It’s an emotive subject and it should be, it has reach.” Robertson first joined Killie 13 years ago when a speculative application saw then- chairman Michael Johnston appoint her as club secretary, a do-it-all role that quickly taught her every aspect of the inner workings of the game. She saw the club through 10 managers, through the transition from fan disenfranchisement at Johnston and the club being detached from its community to bringing them home, recruiting Steve Clarke and getting Killie back to Europe, albeit without the pot of gold at the end of that rainbow she had hoped for.
“I grew up a Killie fan, my dad was a season-ticket holder,” she said, “so I wrote into the club one day with my CV, with my finance and HR skillset, saying ‘Anything I can do for you…’ It turned out there was!
“That was 2007 and I had no idea what a club secretary did. It turned out to be everything! I shared an office with Jim Jefferies, was given an SFA and SPL handbook and left to get on with it.
“I was effectively general manager, chief exec – which I was eventually called – or head of football operations, which I am now at St Johnstone. Same set of responsibilities but I’ve never been precious about titles.
“I’ve been through a fair few managers and that aspect is hard when you’re working closely with someone but sometimes have to make the hard decision or the tough recommendation.”
Killie were going through a tough time on and off the park – but for a town native, Robertson revealed one moment persuaded her more than any other that change had to come for them.
“The players were training at Garscube in Glasgow,” she said. “They were only actually coming to Kilmarnock to play a game once every fortnight. Apart from that we had very little contact.
“In my first transfer window I signed two players, the next window I was doing their release papers.
“One of them, Martyn Corrigan who’d come from Motherwell, said: ‘It’s sad, I’ve come to this club and you seem like a really nice person but the only times I’ve met you have been the day I signed and the day you released me.
I’ve not felt part of anything at the club.’
“So I made a conscious decision that had to change – and it upset a few people.
“Being at a club should never be just about the money you take home in your pay packet, it has to be about the culture.
“You must have something that makes people want to be a part of it and feel an attachment and a loyalty, give them rewards that aren’t just financial but emotional. “And it wasn’t an easy change. We took slow steps. We had to find a place to train – the hotel at Rugby Park had been built on the old training pitch and we didn’t have £3million to build a new facility. “Eventually we got the plastic pitch in and the team came back to Rugby Park on a daily basis.
“The difference was huge. Your squad should be part of the whole club, not just your first team.
“It’s your youth players, kitchen staff, support staff, cleaners. “Everyone should know everyone else – and that’s what creates a good club and an effective team. “People can criticise the pitch all they like but we were happy to suck it up because of what its represented to us.
“There wasn’t a single bit of dissent from within.”
Rober tson took a twoyear hiatus from Killie to become head of HR for an American global aerospace company.
She was persuaded to return in 2017, taking over as the polarising Johnston finally walked away.
“And then we got Steve Clarke,” she grinned, like a lovelorn teenager, “whom I’d been looking for, for a long, long time!
“And what a fantastic experience it was working with him.
“We were completely aligned in so many ways. Anything off the pitch, he just said, ‘I don’t want to know – football’s my sole focus and you deal with the rest.’
“We’d been in touch with him through third parties over the years but the time had never been right.
“Then all of a sudden it was. It was the perfect storm, getting us to third in the league and back in Europe.
“But all good things come to an end, eh? Eventually we arrived at a point, sitting in a dugout together, chatting, and we both looked at each other and said: ‘We’re not going to be here next season, are we?’”
Six months on from that prophetic conversation, both are now feeling their way in a new environment but Robertson is sure the same success came come.
“We’re taking baby steps,” she insisted, “but they’re all in the right direction.”
In 2007, I had no idea what a club secretary did .. turns out that it’s everything