Junior football, what is the future?

[the tin man]

Would have to have formally  applied first.  Sadly I hear that their senior office bearers have decided and openly stated that thon pesky lowland league isnae for them.
A decision they will regret in time I feel.  Ah well that's their lookout but the fans should have been consulted a long time ago as after all committees come and go, supporters don't.

That's why crossan left a think he wanted change

[drs]

13 minutes ago, the tin man said:

That's why crossan left a think he wanted change

I think Tynieness may be aware of that

[Cumbo]

Surely has to be a 16 team top league. Can't go to 12 teams at this late stage. Would they relegate the bottom 6 & add the 2 highest placed from the Premier?

[John S]

Superleague of 16 plus two Regional leagues. Likely only to be for one season only as further changes likely due to other teams leaving or Juniors joining the pyramid

[Cumbo]

That seems the most sensible suggestion anyway

[Auld Heid]

1 hour ago, Tynieness said:

Would have to have formally  applied first.  Sadly I hear that their senior office bearers have decided and openly stated that thon pesky lowland league isnae for them.

A decision they will regret in time I feel.  Ah well that's their lookout but the fans should have been consulted a long time ago as after all committees come and go, supporters don't.

Change doesn't come without engagement -  Bo'ness have clearly not done enough to engage  members (or in our case NOTHING).   The members at Linlithgow are full of mis-information and that's resulted in a biased/negative view of what change actually means.

Was the failure not convincing the committee or not involving the members to encourage change through a groundswell of support.

 

 

[Marten]

42 minutes ago, Cumbo said:

Surely has to be a 16 team top league. Can't go to 12 teams at this late stage. Would they relegate the bottom 6 & add the 2 highest placed from the Premier?

Don't forget that 3 East Superleague teams are leaving. So if they don't change anything to promotion/relegation, the division will be down to 13.

[Goalie Hamish]

Who cares now anyway ? Teams have made their beds and will have to lie in them.
if yer team has went to the EOS, off ye go to the East of Scotland forum and good luck. At the end of this season you are history, move on and don't bother coming back, not interested.
if yer still gonna be a junior team then this is YOUR forum.

Delicious [emoji23] [emoji23]

[Robert James]

6 hours ago, archieb said:

 

Can we PLEASE stop making these assertions, especially by referring to the CURRENT structure of the pyramid in England.

What, if anything, IS relevant is the EARLY stage of the English pyramid when the feeder leagues to the Conference were the Northern Premier League, the Southern League and the Isthmian League.

The geographical footprint of the Southern League then was everything from the Midlands (e.g. Nuneaton Borough, Loughborough United) to the South Coast except the extreme southeast (Bath City and Yeovil Town were in but no teams from Cornwall or Devon), also including the south east (e.g. Folkestone, Dover) and the London area (e.g. Dartford, Romford, Bexley United).

The Isthmian League's Geographical footprint in those days very much overlapped with the Southern, covering London (e.g. Hendon, Leyton, Dulwich Hamlet) and surrounding counties (Woking, St Albans City) but also stretching out to Oxford (City) and Wycombe (Wanderers).

It was only many years later that the composition of those leagues was drastically altered so that they do not overlap and the Isthmian League now covers London, the Southeast and East Anglia while the Southern covers the Southwest, Midlands and the areas immediately north and west of London.

Similar developments have taken place at lower levels in the English pyramid since its inception.

So, let's say from 2019-20 initially for a season or two, why in principle shouldn't there be two partially overlapping (geographically) East Lowlands feeders to the Lowland League in the shape of the EoSL & ERSJFA, with a clearly stated intention that, over a number of seasons, they would amalgamate. A similar melding of SoSL and WRSJFA could also be set in motion.

What's the major stumbling block to  something like this? As far as I can see, only the insistence of the SJFA hierarchy and of large number of its clubs (even those that are stated to be pro-pyramid) that the SJFA must retain its separate identity and that the "Junior grade" of football has to remain something special and apart from the non-SPFL "Seniors". (And possibly a degree of similar but reverse intransigence from the EoSL).

Is that a good enough reason for there not to be progress towards a fully integrated Scottish football pyramid? Whatever any of us thinks right now, I suspect that the prospect we're faced with will be very different 12 and 24 months in the future than it looks right now!

I agree with your point that the situation "will be very different 12 to 24 months in the future",  but cannot see 2 competing East feeders within the Scottish pyramid structure. We will have to agree to differ, and wait and see what develops.

[Sergeant Wilson]

9 hours ago, patriot1 said:

For me amalgamating the North and South and running a 16-16-17 set up would be the best.

The alternatives would be a 12-12 super and premier with the other 25 split between north and south. The problem with that is two teams being relegated from the super without expecting it not to mention going back to a 22 game season.

Or a 16  team super with two regional leagues of 17 and 16 teams which is the worst option for me.

None are ideal, but it looks like it can only be temporary, while they work out a combined EoS.

[Cumbo]

Don't forget that 3 East Superleague teams are leaving. So if they don't change anything to promotion/relegation, the division will be down to 13.

They will just promote the highest placed premier league teams to keep it at 16 teams. That would be the logical choice

[LongTimeLurker]

According to a poster on nonleaguematters there will be a cooling off period of 7 days before any official announcements by the EoS league:

http://nonleaguematters.co.uk/forum/gforum.cgi?post=869913#869913

[Marten]

11 minutes ago, Cumbo said:

 

They will just promote the highest placed premier league teams to keep it at 16 teams. That would be the logical choice

 

That would be the most logical thing to do indeed, so it will likely not happen.

[TheNauld]

Would have to have formally  applied first.  Sadly I hear that their senior office bearers have decided and openly stated that thon pesky lowland league isnae for them.
A decision they will regret in time I feel.  Ah well that's their lookout but the fans should have been consulted a long time ago as after all committees come and go, supporters don't.

Correct, Whitburn regretted not joining the Super League and struggled for a while to get into it. It’s definitely a big mistake by both Bo’ness and Lithgae I’m not joining

[Auld Heid]

All teams leaving should automatically be deducted at least 15 points (and kicked out all cup competitions)  - they don't deserve to leave the juniors with any glory.

 

 

[Auld Heid]

3 minutes ago, TheNauld said:

 

 

Correct, Whitburn regretted not joining the Super League and struggled for a while to get into it. It’s definitely a big mistake by both Bo’ness and Lithgae I’m not joining

 

Only time will tell if it's a big mistake - the bigger crime was not even consulting their supporters. 

[Jason King]

8 hours ago, Truthteller said:

Who cares now anyway ? Teams have made their beds and will have to lie in them.

if yer team has went to the EOS, off ye go to the East of Scotland forum and good luck. At the end of this season you are history, move on and don't bother coming back, not interested.

if yer still gonna be a junior team then this is YOUR forum.

Well clearly you are interested or you wouldn't be in the middle of this tear stained meltdown.

It doesn't worry you that a quarter of the top 32 sides in the East are leaving? It doesn't bother you that figure moves to just under a third of the top East leagues when you take out the teams who fall into the LL area?

I'd be very worried about the future of the structure I'm in if there comparable figures moving in the West.

[LongTimeLurker]

37 minutes ago, Robert James said:

I agree with your point that the situation "will be very different 12 to 24 months in the future",  but cannot see 2 competing East feeders within the Scottish pyramid structure....

Something that means very few blazers lose their posts is more likely than something radical that would mean people negotiating to potentially lose their role within the game, which is the biggest thing that has ever and will ever happen in their lives. On that basis I suspect two overlapping feeders is more likely than a logical integration of the east region and EoS and also suspect that a rump of traditionalist minded clubs staying outside for many years and lingering like welfare leagues still do long after the grade has lost its former vitality may even be more likely than the overlapping feeders scenario.

Think the main stumbling blocks to full junior integration is firstly what happens north of the Tay if the Highland League and Tayside juniors don't want to go along with the concept of having Dundee teams a promotion away from playing in Brora and Wick, and secondly the need to have a champion by the end of April and the implications that has for the running of the junior cup. It probably means that replays would need to be binned and the competition may even need to be played almost to completion well before Christmas so league fixtures can take priority later on.

There's no guarantee that there would still be a majority for junior pyramid entry at an EGM after 12 of the most gung ho pro pyramid clubs have left to the EoS and the remaining clubs grasp the full implications of what would actually be involved. Think the SFA full members are also probably more comfortable with a slow drift towards their designated east and west feeders than a sudden massive influx of potential new full members hence the moratorium on taking applications until it all gets sorted out, which could also be read as until negotiations are expected to collapse.

Edited April 27, 2018 by LongTimeLurker

[Robert James]

11 minutes ago, LongTimeLurker said:

Something that means very few blazers lose their posts is more likely than something radical that would mean people negotiating to potentially lose their role within the game, which is the biggest thing that has ever and will ever happen in their lives. On that basis I suspect two overlapping feeders is more likely than a logical integration of the east region and EoS and also suspect that a rump of traditionalist minded clubs staying outside for many years and lingering like welfare leagues still do long after the grade has lost its former vitality may even be more likely than the overlapping feeders scenario.

Think the main stumbling blocks to full junior integration is firstly what happens north of the Tay if the Highland League and Tayside juniors don't want to go along with the concept of having Dundee teams a promotion away from playing in Brora and Wick, and secondly the need to have a champion by the end of April and the implications that has for the running of the junior cup. It probably means that replays would need to be binned and the competition may even need to be played almost to completion well before Christmas so league fixtures can take priority later on.

There's no guarantee that there would still be a majority for junior pyramid entry at an EGM after 12 of the most gung ho pro pyramid clubs have left to the EoS and the remaining clubs grasp the full implications of what would actually be involved. Think the SFA full members are also probably more comfortable with a slow drift towards their designated east and west feeders than a sudden massive influx of potential new full members hence the moratorium on taking applications until it all gets sorted out, which could also be read as until negotiations are expected to collapse.

I agree that your conclusions are probably correct.

Can we expect any feedback in the near future, from the meeting between the SJFA/TJ and the West junior clubs, about the pyramid situation ?.

[cmontheloknow]

2 minutes ago, Robert James said:

I agree that your conclusions are probably correct.

Can we expect any feedback in the near future, from the meeting between the SJFA/TJ and the West junior clubs, about the pyramid situation ?.

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