Board Update: June 26

Last night, the Board of Directors held the Football Club’s monthly board meeting via Zoom and, as has become customary, the Directors have provided the following update to supporters, sponsors and others interested in progress being made by the club.

Preparing for Football

One month on from the last Board Update, the club is still very much in a period of unknown regarding the possible return of football, but Directors continue to keep up to date with goings-on through regular calls with Lowland League officials.

But although no start date has officially been announced for the return of the Lowland League, work continues behind the scenes to ensure we are in the best possible position for when we do return.

To that end, there have developments on how we plan to assist the management team and players with regards to player performance during the 2020/21 season and beyond. Further details can be expected on this over the weekend, so stay tuned.

We also want to ensure that Shielfield Park is geared up and ready for the return of football, with work commissioned to facilitate some repairs and improvements to Shielfield Park.

There is still more to do and for those of you who have new-found DIY skills developed in lockdown, again, we ask you to keep an eye out for some opportunities to help with our preparations. In any event, we look forward to welcoming you all there, when it is safe to do so.

Fundraising & Community Engagement

We have been delighted with the response to the announcement of our Women’s & Girls programme. This is a really exciting development and we look forward to working alongside Berwick Rangers Juniors Chairman Steven Ingram and newly-appointed Head of Women’s & Girls Football Andy Thorpe on this exciting initiative.

Our shirt raffle heads into its final chase, the winner of which will see their brand printed on all home and away ‘Gers strips next season. The club is delighted to have now exceeded its target number of sales for the raffle and we would like to thank all entrants to date for their incredible support.

Donate A Ticket was a tremendously fun affair, with the club going out to a strong and bold Tranent team. It was a fun cup run and we thank you all for your contributions throughout.

Growing the Club

We continue to grow and are delighted to announce that we have brought onboard three match day reporters – Eion Smith, Cameron Wanstall & Andrew Wright – following a great response to an advert put out by the club a number of weeks ago.

Eion, Cameron and Andrew are all either journalism students or graduates and we are pleased to be able to give them a platform to professionally develop and put their skills into practice. The journalists are based in Seahouses, Edinburgh and Glasgow – so the hope is that match reports and reaction can be provided to fans from all of our fixtures in the 2020/21 season.

After three months as an Associate Director, Nathan Thompson has joined Brian Porteous, Craig Forsyth, Dave Buglass and Douglas Younger as a Director of the Football Club. Nathan will continue to oversee all Digital output, which has enjoyed significant growth in his time at the Football Club – and Brian, Craig, Dave and Douglas are delighted to have him onboard as a fully-fledged Director.

In our End of Season Zoom, we outlined a desire to continually look at our business model and revenue drivers. The Directors agreed on the launch of a new and exciting offering and, again, we will be sharing more on this in the coming week.

It’s exciting to start to think about football returning and our focus has started to shift towards this. Whilst we do not yet know when this will be possible, there is hope of a safe return. Until then, please do stay safe and we will see you all again soon at Shielfield Park.