Lessons learned will help Elgin City deal with latest coronavirus restrictions
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LESSONS learned in the past are set to help Elgin City deal with the new coronavirus restrictions imposed on football by the Scottish Government.
City chairman Graham Tatters refused to grumble and groan about the restrictions, which will see the return of social distancing and limit the crowd at Borough Briggs to 500.
He said: “500 fans is OK, we can deal with that.
“We were dealing with 300 before and we have learnt all our lessons from that. It’s going to be the same as it was when the first crowds were allowed back in. There’s nothing new to it so it’s not going to be a great catastrophe.
“Obviously we are going to lose out but it’s definitely better than no crowds. There’s no good in greeting about it – it is what it is and it’s for public health.”
A total of 300 tickets will be sold online for tomorrow’s home match against Forfar Athletic, with the rest reserved for season ticket holders. There will be no pay-at-the-gate sales.
Elgin City's average gate this season is 531, with a weekend game just after new year – against a high-flying opposition – likely to have attracted well more than that figure.
Tatters added: “We have emailed all season ticket holders and gold card holders asking if they are going to be coming and we will then adjust the figures.
“It’s nothing new and we just have to get on with it. We have a good Covid officer and general manager and all staff know what they’re doing so everything is above board.”
The bar will remain open at Borough Briggs, but the decision has been made to put hospitality on the backburner, along with many popular festive nights.
“We cancelled our Christmas and New Year’s events because we thought that would be a responsible position to take in trying not to spread Covid,” Tatters said. “It’s disappointing to lose those because they’re really good nights at our place.
“We were allowed to continue with hospitality but by the time you go through the rigmarole of masks and social distancing it’s not very entertaining. Losing hospitality doesn’t help but we made the difficult decision to stop that for the time being.”
For those who can’t attend, Elgin City will continue to provide a livestream for all matches this season. This service, unfortunately, is only likely to last until the end of the campaign.
Tatters added: “People find the streams entertaining so we have invested in that. The SPFL and SFA had to make a request to FIFA to allow us to stream between 2.45pm and 5.15pm and it seems unlikely this will be allowed next season.
“But we will still record games and show them later on.”
