It was hardly the moment to start splitting hairs. On a day of such abject humiliation, Stuart Kettlewell could be forgiven the touch of hyperbole with which he concluded his media duties.
Reappointed Ross County manager at the turn of the year, Kettlewell had won four of his opening seven league matches to offer some hope that the season could yet be salvaged. It was then that the walls started to close in.
County were without a win in five matches prior to facing Airdrieonians on April 4. None of which prepared him for such a woeful display as his side slumped 4-0 at home to one of their relegation rivals.
‘It’s the worst result in the club’s history, the worst performance in the club’s history,’ he stated.
Alarmingly for the Staggies faithful, it wasn’t even the poorest show of what’s been a thoroughly wretched campaign. Those present for the 6-0 loss away to Raith Rovers on December 13 would claim to have seen worse.
There have been many other episodes best watched through the cracks in one’s fingers. Try a 3-0 defeat away to Arbroath and a home loss to Morton by the same margin. Under Don Cowie, Tony Docherty and Kettlewell, there have been a litany of disasters.
Stuart Kettlewell has returned to the County dugout but is facing a real battle for survival
County defender Akil Wright reflects on a costly defeat away at Queen’s Park last time out
Since the latter laid claim to having presided over the daddy of them all against the Diamonds, matters have only got worse.
Last Friday’s 1-0 defeat to Queen’s Park left County firmly rooted to the foot of the Championship table.
Now two points behind Airdrie with just three games remaining, it appears the best Kettlewell’s side can hope for is scrambling into the play-off spot.
With back-to-back home games against Ayr and Morton preceding a return to Stark’s Park, they have a slither of hope of staying afloat. But only that.
A Premiership side for 12 out of the past 13 seasons, County supporters are having to reconcile themselves with the very real possibility that they are about to suffer the ignominy of successive demotions.
It’s been a spectacular fall from grace. One that, truthfully, no one saw coming when they first went down last May.
County’s relegation from the top flight came in the play-offs at the hands of Livingston. Given the side had finished 11th in the previous two seasons, only escaping with memorable victories over Partick Thistle and Raith Rovers, there was a sense that their luck was bound to run out at some stage.
Yet, with owner Roy MacGregor opting to keep faith with local hero Cowie, there was at least continuity going into this term.
In recent years, Dundee United and Livingston had reaped the benefit of sticking by Jim Goodwin and David Martindale, respectively, after taking the drop. The smart money was on County fighting it out with Partick Thistle and St Johnstone for the one automatic place.
County became a fixture in the Scottish Premiership and claimed League Cup glory in 2016
Acquisitions including Declan Gallagher, Ross Docherty and Nicky Clark offered a considerable injection of experience into the squad. Gary Mackay-Steven, Jamie Lindsay and Alex Iacovitti also returned to the club.
These were individuals who needed no introduction to the challenges of playing at Victoria Park.
With the free-scoring Ronan Hale still on board when the season kicked off, the minimum expectation was a promotion play-off spot.
Notwithstanding the dog-eat-dog nature of the Championship, what’s transpired has been an unmitigated disaster.
MacGregor’s loyalty to a much-respected former player in Cowie was incumbent on the newly calibrated side hitting the ground running in the second tier. One win in nine certainly wasn’t part of the plan.
For all the world, Tony Docherty, who replaced Cowie in September, felt like the right man at the right time. As Derek McInnes’s right-hand man, he’d previously won the Championship with St Johnstone and Kilmarnock.
Docherty had been rather unceremoniously dumped by Dundee despite keeping them in the Premiership. Their loss would surely be County’s gain.
Chief executive Steven Ferguson said at the time that Docherty had a ‘fire burning like a manager who thinks he has got things to prove’.
He added: ‘That aligns with Ross County and the fact we’ve got things we need to prove — we want to win this league, and we want to get back to the top flight.’
So much for all of that. With hindsight, the rot appeared to have set in long before Docherty arrived. He was denied even the hint of a ‘new manager bounce’. He planned to turn things around when the transfer window opened in January yet didn’t get that far.
Docherty had tasted just two league wins before the plug was pulled on him after that hammering in Kirkcaldy.
Tony Docherty was brought in after the axing of Don Cowie but managed only two league wins
Like the man he succeeded, Kettlewell also arrived on the scene with a decent pedigree from his first spell at the club when he — working alongside Ferguson — helped take the Staggies to the Championship title in 2019.
His subsequent time in charge at Motherwell and then Kilmarnock appeared to be more grist to his mill. But after a trace of early promise, he also found himself unable to come up with the answers to County’s myriad problems. When three managers of considerable standing in the game each fail to get a tune out of a group, it suggests that the issues run far deeper.
Irrespective of how the remainder of this campaign unfolds, the club needs to take stock of what’s got them to this point and reconnect itself with the things which, for long enough, made it one of Scottish football’s great success stories.
Nothing will be more essential than a re-evaluation of how and which players are recruited.
Attracting footballers to a town with a population of a little over 5,500 when your stadium holds 6,541 is never an easy task at the best of times. Throw in trips up and down the A9 in the depth of winter and it can become an extremely hard sell.
Where County previously succeeded in this, though, was ensuring that any players they did approach would see the move as beneficial to careers which were in danger of flatlining.
Individuals like Jackson Irvine, Michael Gardyne and Richard Brittain joined the Staggies as hungry young players who couldn’t quite make the grade elsewhere. They all bought into the ethos of the club — a desire to thumb their nose at the big city clubs down the road.
In more recent times, Regan Charles-Cook arrived knowing that a couple of good seasons would propel him to bigger things. Box ticked.
Ditto the case of Hale, who left for Gillingham for £250,000 in January, having signed two years previously from Cliftonville.
County forward Noah Chilvers will be relied upon to keep his side up in their final three games
How many of those faces who arrived last summer came through the door with a point to prove or a move to earn? You do wonder if this squad — brimming with players approaching or over the age of 30 — ever had the requisite hunger to succeed.
Perhaps, having been mentally set for a tilt at the title, they’ve been unable to refocus on merely staying in the division. The fact is that when the going has got tough, they have wilted.
A decade on from seeing their side defeat Hibs to win the League Cup at Hampden, County fans are now adopting the brace position.
If the worst happens, the recent cases of Falkirk and St Mirren — where relegations necessitated changes in structure and strategy — will offer some hope that brighter days may lie ahead.
County must recapture the formula which took them from the Highland League to the Premiership while identifying the recent errors of their ways.
