Raith Rovers: New board overseeing upgrade to Stark's Park was 'critical' says CEO Andrew Barrowman

Barrowman is part of the new Raith board along with fellow ex-Kelty Hearts director Dean Mckenzie (Rovers’ general manager), local businessmen Colin Smart and Ruari Kilgour, existing chairman Steven MacDonald and football operations manager Allan Halliday.

Although he’s not on the board, former Kelty Hearts manager John Potter has also recently come in at Kirkcaldy as the Championship club’s first technical director.

"I think it was critical that we made these changes to the stadium," Barrowman told the Fife Free Press. "I talked about it in the early discussions.

"The football department, the football environment, had to get better. It wasn't good enough.

"If we're trying to attract players then it's very important that they're going to enjoy coming to work every day.

"We want players to get better every day so they need to be comfortable with the environment, wanting to stay and do extra and the facilities are there for them. That was important from a performance point of view.

"If I'm honest that was a priority, the most important thing.

"The other parts of the plans are money generators. If we can invest in certain areas of the ground I think longer term they're going to bring finances into the club.

"That's again very important in how we want to go forward.

"It's a two-fold objective, both commercial and the performance side with the boys on the pitch."

After several months of negotiations, Barrowman and the other consortium members purchased Raith from Thailand-based businessman John Sim last month after reports that Rovers had been losing an average of £150,000 a year since 2005, prompting Sim to sell his majority stakeholding.