Chief Executive Steve Waggott on his background, how the move came about and the appeal of joining Rovers

In his first interview since taking over, Waggott outlined his footballing background, how the move came about and the appeal of joining a club like Rovers.

Background

“This is my fifth club.

“The first one was Charlton Athletic, I went in on the back of being Chief Executive of the Community Trust aspect so I built up all the Community Trust side.

“Each club I have been at I have been a member of the Trustees at each of the community trusts to develop that aspect of the business as well before I morphed across to being group Chief Executive at Charlton Athletic for three-and-a-half years.

“We got relegated, tough times, we restructured and it’s a great community club, great values from their history and after that I moved to Coventry City for four very tough years.

“I really went for three months to do an audit and ended up being there for four years with all the insuing issues of administration, minus 10 points and groundshare, fans up in arms because of the way the club had been run and a lack of success so quite an interesting period of my life that.

“I went for a short while to Gillingham, helped out on working on the commercial aspects of that club and done a short stint with Southend before I came to Blackburn to this great old club up here.”

How the role came about

“There’s a headhunting company who scour the market for people to fill posts in sport, predominantly football.

“I was approached by a couple of clubs but when this one came on the radar I was extremely interested because of the size of the club, the history of the club, the whole infrastrucutre of the club.

“I thought that it could be an unbelievably good challenge for me.”

The appeal of Rovers

“The legacy of the club being one of only six clubs to ever win the Premier League, the history of being one of the founder members way back when of the league, the infrastructure of Ewood Park and a Category One Academy which is unbelievable. The facilities at the Senior Training Centre are stunning.

“So the whole infrastrucutre is ready to take off.

“Obviously the magic ingredient as we’ve spoken about is winning games of football.

“I have worked with Tony Mowbray and Mark Venus before at Coventry so there was no agenda there, I know how he operates, a great footballing man, lives, sleeps, talks about football every day.

“He likes to bring through young players, likes to play in an attacking style which is quite attractive, similar to my values as a Chief Executive of how I would like a team to perform and therefore that was the entry point to the club with those combined things of infrastructure, current manager, Academy being Category One and go and give it a strategic overview and let’s move ahead.”