Saints MD Stewart Duff set to retire

Mar 9 2010 by Gordon Bannerman, Perthshire Advertiser Tuesday

ST JOHNSTONE chairman Geoff Brown yesterday paid tribute to long-time managing director Stewart Duff, who has confirmed he will be retiring from the Perth post at the end of the season.

Lifelong Saints fan Duff, who turned 60 before the turn of the year, has been a director with the Perth club since 1989 and combined a bank role with club secretary duties at Muirton Park long before the move to McDiarmid.

He was an integral part of the revolution instigated by Brown and other board members in the late eighties when the cash-strapped club was part-time. Yesterday, the chairman labelled Duff “my right arm and a hard act to follow.”

Confirming his plans to sever ties in the summer, Duff, who was appointed managing director in 1993 after a banking career, said: “I alerted the chairman to my intentions in October to give him and the board plenty time to plan ahead. I won’t be continuing as a director. I think a clean break is for the best rather than my successor having me looking over his shoulder.

“I have been lucky to have great staff and fantastic support over all the years I have been here and I have no doubt they will continue to take the club forward.”

Brown said: “Stewart indicated he no longer wished to be working at the club six days a week now that he has turned 60 and I understand that completely. He has worked day in, day out for this football club over many, many years, in a difficult position which brings with it a lot of hassle. ”

The chairman labelled Duff “an unsung hero” adding: “For me he has been tremendous. He became a director fairly early on at Muirton Park. The difference from most clubs is that Stewart is a true St Johnstone supporter and everything was always done with the best interests of the football club at heart. He was always sensible about things.

“We all want to see the team winning but the club is also a business which has to survive into the future.

“Stewart has been my right arm down the years. I would never make a decision going over his head. It has been a partnership.

“It’s Stewart’s decision to make a clean break and I respect that. I tried to talk him round but he feels if he can’t offer anything to the board in practical terms he doesn’t want to be a hanger-on. After all this time he knows how I work!

“Before either of us were ever involved with St Johnstone we were fans paying our way in at the gate. We go back a long way.

“He has had to put up with a lot of flak down the years and probably kept a lot of it away from me. And that was fine by me! Sometimes fans were looking for a scapegoat but no one should ever underestimate the work he has put in and just how big this business is now.

“When we first came in the turnover was £103,000. We were bottom of the Second Division in 1986. Now we are in the SPL again and it’s now in excess of £4 million with more than 80 members of staff.

“Unlike other businesses, decisions and the implications are played out in the public eye and that makes things more difficult.”

Brown, while stressing he hadn’t taken a long-term view of his own position, admitted the younger board members, including son Steve, would have a major say in the way forward. They would be working closely with Duff’s successor.

“I don’t really see myself bedding in with anyone else at this stage and there could be a different slant to the new job.

“One of the reasons I have kept going is the relationship with Stewart Duff. On the football side of things we always tried to keep the lid on things between ourselves and the manager. There was complete trust there.”