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Highland League restructuring


Cyclizine

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On what I've seen so far its a no from me. The league is fine the way it is.

In my opinion the only thing that would improve the Highland league would be moving it to the summer.

How many of us know football fans that leave towns to go and watch Aberdeen, Celtic, Rangers, Caley Thistle etc on Saturdays. It just might attract these fans to the Highland league with no other option of football in the summer.

Save clubs money on the use of floodlights.

Give an opportunities for the likes of Caley Thistle, Ross County, Aberdeen, etc to loan young players to the Highland league so they can get them ready for first team season ahead.

I just don't understand the lure of the Scottish league.

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Got to say, seems perfectly placed for a link with the Juniors. Relegate 2 from highland league to juniors and have a 16-16 with the two regional divisions below that allowing the amatuer teams a place to apply for if they want to enter the pyramid system.

Could end with a similar system in the south if the Juniors refuse to join where under the Lowland League you'd havre the East of Scotland Prremier (rebranded) then under that the EOS and SOS leagues (again rebranded as north east and south west.)

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It would have been much better to use the east and west junior superleagues as the template for the fifth tier in the south for a three way split. Too much boardroom politics in the way for that to ever happen though, because people seem incapable of moving beyond the whole junior vs senior thing.

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On what I've seen so far its a no from me. The league is fine the way it is.

In my opinion the only thing that would improve the Highland league would be moving it to the summer.

How many of us know football fans that leave towns to go and watch Aberdeen, Celtic, Rangers, Caley Thistle etc on Saturdays. It just might attract these fans to the Highland league with no other option of football in the summer.

Save clubs money on the use of floodlights.

Give an opportunities for the likes of Caley Thistle, Ross County, Aberdeen, etc to loan young players to the Highland league so they can get them ready for first team season ahead.

I just don't understand the lure of the Scottish league.

Me either

The fact is that the experience of Elgin & Peterhead are far more likely for what's left of the HFL rather than following in the footsteps of ICT or County

The HFL & North Juniors is the single best fit for a pyramid and summer fitba imo. Standing at Harlaw, Ian Mair Park or Polo Park is no fun at all from November through March...

Come to think about it, it's fun at all, period

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The thing is that by having a pyramid you eliminate this desire for SPFL thing and all teams just find their level. While there is no movement teams who fancy a shot can't get it and similar if Elgin decided they were struggling there is no way to fall back to regionalized football.

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Although the local newspapers had said no decision would be taken tonight, the Highland League clubs have voted against the reconstruction plans, say Brora Rangers...

Two League Proposal Thrown Out

http://www.brorarangersfc.co.uk/club/267420/News/view/823871

Back to the drawing board...or more likely pretend no-one suggested changing things. Ever

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Shoot me down for this, but has a mid-season split been suggested? Although some think it's stupid in the Premiership, I think it's quite a good thing and with the HL being the largest league in Scottish senior football, would a (current) 9-9 split make the mid-table fixtures a bit more interesting / competitive?

Ideally I'd prefer to see a more pyramid style being suggested however with teams coming in from the North Super League / North Caledonian League. If a team like e.g. Banks o' Dee wanted to be set their sights on being on a Par with neighbouring Cove, that would at least give them the opportunity.

Rothes, Fort William and Strathspey are great away days with the 59 Club in the corner, the beer garden behind the goals and The Craig pies respectively, and I can understand if HL fans would be sorry to see them outside the league for any period of time, never mind the HL history of these clubs, but things like the playoffs between the HL/LL & L2 are happening for a good reason imo and should be extended.

Of course, would junior winners actually want to be senior???

Sorry to be controversial.

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Additionally what will the complaints about number of games be if say Peterhead and Elgin were relegated from League 2 with Spartans and Threave winning the HL/LL playoffs in the first couple of seasons post-current-reform???

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It'd be interesting to see what'd happen if a couple of north-of-Tay clubs went down... Regarding a split - the problem would be splitting in the mid-winter? Difficult to achieve considering weather and 'games-in-hand'.

I imagine you'd see objections about fairness of playing everyone once pre-split, only 25 games, and bottom half playing for nothing, too.

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  • 4 months later...

Pyramid Pete will be apoplectic.

On the contrary Dave ... Pete is very relaxed after 3 months in the Algarve on new projects. Since 1972, when `Football Systems Dynamics` was written following the Chester Commitee`s damning report on UK football, MOST people have recognised the need for reform ... and many items contained in that document ... such as `a pyramid` ... `community clubs` ... much stronger competition and financing ... have been widely accepted and adopted, through the pyramid campaign. Nice to see that the last club Pete was involved with - Hurlford United - are now in the Junior Cup final, under a chairman he introduced to the club.

Scotland`s top leagues continue to be held back by control of the system by SPFL ... who have designed an `idiots` feeder system to keep themselves well in control ... not surprisingly rejected by the Juniors ... and anyone sensible. SFM ... the continuing pyramid site ... still has thousands of visitors and adherents ... and (of course) it doesn`t list any of the ridiculous SPFL `feeder` nonsense.

It must be clear to all but the most extremely backward that Scottish football can only progress with a full `national` organisation and competition ... like almost every other country. That requires a legitimate SFA ... and reasonable rules. Unfortunately, though, many selfish clubs have decided to take part in silly side shows .... but be assured that Pete will still have a good tan whatever SFA clubs do. And simple truths will still be valid ..

Most football fans everywhere work on the assumption that `there is always hope..`. Well ... I just hope they get something a lot better ...

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Any news on future league reconstruction in the highland league, will you just got to a 19 team league if a Lowland team go up and say Montrose or Elgin come down?

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Looking in from the outside my guess is that would bring the 10-10 issue to a head again... as 19 clubs would mean 38 matchdays instead of 34.

Going by the comments on here, FitbaNorth and the various local papers at the time of Keith's proposal, some of the criticism was directed at any moves away from 1 big league... but some of the criticism was that going from 34 league games to only 18, and reintroducing the North Challenge Cup, was not desirable. If they refloated the 10-10 idea but with a more sensible balance of matches (e.g. 27 league games and a short extra cup), who knows?

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An odd number of games like that is likely to be shot down. An extra cup is likely to be laughed at, as that is likely to mean no more than one games for the clubs at the bottom of the existing league. An 18 game league season isn't a season.

Had the proposal been to reshuffle the league down to 16 teams and negotiate a second division with the North Region Juniors, we might have got somewhere. A 10 team league isn't wanted, but restructuring of some sort is going to have to happen.

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