I agree he came off well. But then again he tends to when he limits the amount of talking he does to fans/local media to highly managed/structured media appearances when he has a specific message and time to prepare.
He is materially ‘good’ at elements of his job in this situation. ie the ‘Corporate Timmy’ persona where he says a lot, uses multiple buzzwords and strategically placed phrases whilst divulging relatively little that he doesn’t want to and answering things diplomatically.
Key take away for me was a passing frank turn of phrase that we’d be looking for somewhere to play after 2026 for ‘a couple of years’ - which is what we all knew but it’s the first time I’ve seen any real acknowledgement at a senior level of the kind of timescales the delays we’ve seen over the past year have caused.
Also thought he tried hard to breeze through the changes in shareholdings in as trite, minimalist a way as possible. Maybe because it’s as simple and ‘binary’ (in his words) as he made it sound, maybe because he doesn’t love being pushed/questioned in any detail about our ownership structure, funding patterns etc.
I don’t think he’s a bad guy. And he presents himself well in a podcast forum like this when he does them infrequently and has time to prepare his key messages (and isn’t forced to deviate from them). As someone that works in a corporate environment I (as many others am sure) can recognise someone who is great at talking the talk, excels at using a LOT of words whilst saying as little of actual substance as he can get away with. I would agree it’s a huge blind spot on the part of The Dub team not to have asked more probing questions around the stadium, timelines, his perspective on the planning process etc. Such a huge blind spot in fact that my fear is that it can’t have been an accident (ie either they were only given limited time so did not have scope to get into ANY detail with him, just how he likes it, or because there were certain subject areas that were off limits).
He was competent, eloquent and on the surface pleasant enough. But as ever with me it’s more the devil in the detail of what he pointedly doesn’t say which generally leaves me with more questions than he ever answers.