"New chapter" at Elgin City Football Club as interim chairwoman Isla Benzie says new recruits on Borough Briggs board of directors to arrive by end of year
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Elgin City's interim chairwoman Isla Benzie says it will take more than one person to replace the retiring Graham Tatters.
But she revealed that a new raft of Borough Briggs directors will be unveiled soon, beginning what she hopes is a new chapter at the end of a crisis-torn year for the club.
Tatters stepped down as City chairman this week for personal reasons, leaving the Moray club with just four existing board members.
Benzie, who stepped as acting chair when Tatters took time out following a family bereavement earlier this year, has resumed the role and paid tributes to the man she has replaced.
And she added that a recent appeal for new directors and club volunteers drew a positive response, with the City board set to be expanded with the recruitment of some fresh blood.
"Whoever comes in will never replace Graham as chair because he was there from quarter past nine until quarter to four every day," she said. "When people are working you just can’t do that.
"We will move more to a model where the board members are running the business part of the club rather than the day-to-day duties. We are really lucky that we have lots of other volunteers that can help with that.
"We were really well supported at the recent open day we had around getting some additional volunteers in, and also when we appealed for people who were interested in being new directors, we are very close to announcing that we have some new directors who will be joining the board.
"On the back of appointing our new management team, we feel it is going to be a new chapter at the club."
She said she expected that new Elgin City board members would be announced before the end of this year, but would not reveal names or numbers.
Tatters served as club chairman since 2005, with Benzie highlighting some of the work he carried out in the background.
"On behalf of the board, what I would say is that there are no words to describe what that man has done for the club," she said.
"People who are out with the club would never understand the amount of work that he put in behind the scenes.
"It’s not just the odd day, it’s every day, it's weekends. If someone needed into the club at night, it was Graham or Cecil (Jack) who went down to let them in.
"Graham lives and breathes Elgin City Football Club.
"Not only for the first team but even more so when it came to the youths, training or games. He was driving the bus up and down the A9 taking young players to Club Academy Scotland games, on a Sunday leaving Elgin at a ridiculous time in the morning to take kids to their match in Airdrie.
"He did the power of work for the club. It will take more than one person to replace him for all the tasks he carried out."
Benzie described 2023 as an "annus horribilis" for Elgin City.
During the 12 months, the club parted company with three managers, narrowly escaped a relegation play-off for the second season running, and lost a record sponsorship deal amidst an email fiasco.
They suffered the most humiliating result in the club's history, a 6-0 Scottish Cup thrashing at sixth-tier minnows Jeanfield Swifts, and have endured a strong of heavy league losses to push them close to the drop zone yet again.
A fourth manager of the year, Allan Hale was recently appointed and Benzie is confident that he can play a large part in creating the bright new horizons she hopes will become apparent in the near future.
"We went from having one of the longest-serving managers in the league (Gavin Price), to moving on to our third this season," she said.
"We now have a north-based manager who knows the Highland League scene and has an extensive knowledge of north football.
"He is absolutely committed to making a success of this and we are fully behind supporting him on that.
"We have had a really positive response to the open day, not just for new directors but we have also got some very good volunteers out of it.
"You will see that our social media has got much better over the last couple of months and that is on the back of a volunteer, Michael Allan, coming in and he is doing a cracking job of it.
"I would say that a lot of things at the club will be done very differently from now on."
