mcruic

Let's compare a 10-10 regional structure (forgetting the LL/HL for a minute). The current structure is more "feelgood". Less than half (9) teams in the current structure are not involved in play-offs/promotion/relegation, whereas 14 of the 20 would not be involved in promotion/play-offs/relegation in a regionalised structure. 2 teams are promoted in the current structure, with a further 6 having promotion play-offs - this would likely be 1 and 3 in the regionalised set up. With the play-offs going down to 4th place, this gives most of the other teams a chance to reach the play-offs - so most teams have something to play for. If the play-offs only went down to 2nd place, half of the league would have several meaningless games towards the end of the season. The one small positive is that there would be no automatic relegation - with 2 clubs being involved in Tier 4/5 play-offs.

I'm writing a wee simulation program that will allow the simulation of any match between any Scottish club (Senior/Junior/Amateur). I'm using last seasons' points per game where available - got most of the leagues (Perthshire is missing as they seem to have deleted last year's tables, and the Glasgow Colleges website is down). Doing this just for fun - I plan to simulate an all-in Scottish Cup with every team in Scotland. No problem getting info about relative strengths of amateur leagues (Scottish Amateur and Highland Amateur Cup results) - but I'm a bit stuck concerning comparative strengths of amateur and junior/sernior football. WEST Afternoon: Caledonian/Central Scottish/Scottish/Ayrshire/Greater Glasgow Premier Morning: Glasgow Colleges, Strathclyde & District, Glasgow & District, Strathclyde Evangelical Churches Caledonian/Central seem to be the best, then maybe Scottish/Ayrshire and GGP, with the morning leagues coming under this. How do the top tiers of these leagues compare with the ex-West Juniors? Some on a par with Tier 4 of the juniors? Better? Some worse? EAST Afternoon: Lothian & Edinburgh, Kingdom of Fife, Perthshire, Stirling & District, Border, Midlands Morning: Dundee Lothian & Edinburgh/Kingdom of Fife/Stirling seem to be the best, then Midlands, Border, Perthshire and the Dundee Saturday Morning League How do these teams compare with the EoS League? On a par with the bottom tier? Better? Worse? NORTH Aberdeenshire, Inverness & District, Skye & Lochalsh, Caithness, North West Sutherland, Orkney, Shetland, Shetland Works, Lewis & Harris, Uist & Barra Aberdeenshire clearly the best here - but how does it compare with North Juniors? Is the top tier as good as the bottom tier of the juniors? What about the summer leagues (all the rest)? How do they compare with the North Caledonian League or the Highland League?

The problem is that when the pyramid was started, the juniors weren't involved. Now that they are involved, they have to start at the bottom, which means that effectively, Tier 6 (WoS) is actually stronger than Tier 5 (Lowland). Tier 6 (EoS) is probably at least as strong as the Lowland League as well. But with only 1 team going up each season, it will take 10-15 years for clubs to all find their place. That's too long. Part of this has to do with the fact that the pyramid is being forced into the 2-league Tier 5, when it really should be 3 (North/East/West) based on number and quality of clubs in each zone. It doesn't make sense to corral 20 or 30 excellent non-league teams into the "Lowland" area, and give them the same chance at a play-off as 5 or 6 equivalent teams in the Highland area. Again, it will take absolutely ages for the "correct" order to transpire. Scotland is the only country in the world where you can find several teams playing at lower tiers who are much better than teams 1 or even 2 tiers above them. A disgrace that we can't sort it out decently.

The amateur set up is divided into 26 regional associations, each of which has varying degrees of professionalism with regard to how they operate. As I mentioned in a previous post, some of the amateur teams are simply pub teams. As for the division of clubs, it's done reasonably well, with the exception of the Glasgow area, which has several leagues covering the same area. Most of the "one division" leagues are in the North, where there is no option, as there are fewer than 10 teams in the entire area covered by the league, and these are all summer leagues. It could do with a bit of an overhaul, but it's already much better than it was years ago - most leagues have a functioning website, where results and tables are updated regularly. Some of the top amateur teams have better support than certain junior or senior teams, but they choose to stay amateur. There's essentially 5 different types of amateur team. 1) - Stalwarts - teams who have a long history, and may have been senior or junior at some point. 2) - Town representative team - with many smaller towns and villages, the team is essentially representing the community. These teams tend to come and go over the years. 3) - Pub team - not too serious - playing recreationally (in that way, no different to the "welfare" teams - the other of Scotland's 4 grades). Again, these teams tend to come and go over the years. 4) - Amateur wing of senior/junior club - to give players a chance at playing competitive football with a view to promoting them to the senior/junior grade. 5) - Organisational club (University/Banks/Services, etc.). The First 2 on this list I would say would be good candidates for joining the pyramid, whereas the other 3 may be happy to play forever at the amateur grade. The first 2 also have some kind of connection to history/the community in which they play, so are more likely to be longer lasting.

Yes well, look at how East Stirlingshire and Berwick Rangers have fared since relegation. Elgin City weren't really one of the top Highland league clubs when they joined the Scottish League, finishing 7-9-5-4-9 in the 5 seasons before election to the SL. So it's no surprise they've stayed in the bottom league since. In saying that, Ross County weren't all that great until a few seasons before they joined the SL. They even finished 18th out of 18 in 1986/87, just 8 years before they would join the SL. Also, results like Broxburn 3-0 Cowdenbeath show that the current system doesn't really reflect reality. Burntisland Shipyard 0-7 Colville Park is another result that stands out - top amateur teams much better than lower level senior teams. The whole setup in Scotland is a mess that's only just starting to be reformed. There's no reason why all adult football can't be brought under one system that reflects playing strength instead of having top ex-junior clubs faffing about 2 or 3 tiers below their true level just because of this artificial bottleneck. Bring the remaining juniors into the fold, and bring the amateurs in as feeders to the WoS, EoS, SoS, NoS - teams can decide whether or not to apply for promotion depending on their means. That way, everybody has a pathway to the top, or a way to mill about at the same level for years if they so desire. Essentially, it's what they have already + an extra opportunity. The fact that clubs are refusing this is laughable. It's like saying to somebody, oh you have £50! How about I enter your name in a draw for another £50, no risk? Nah it's OK, I wouldn't know what to do with £100...

Viewfield haven't folded - they've joined the Strathclyde Saturday Morning League, and taken some players from West of Scotland FC. They'll start at the bottom of the 2 Tier structure (Premier, 2 Championship conferences) - they are in Championship B for 2020/21.

Yes. To be expected though that teams from the top half of a lower league can beat teams from the bottom half of the league above. Leagues aren't generally straight up and down affairs - there is at least 30-50% overlap between bottom of league above/top of league below. Most of the top half teams in the Highland or even Lowland League could beat a League 2 bottom feeder. Top teams in the East of Scotland League would have a chance too.

Another issue is that especially (but not exclusively) in the West, some teams field B and even C teams in certain leagues, and it's not always clear, as the league websites don't differentiate (Oban Saints play their 2nd string in the Greater Glasgow Premier League, for example), but they are just listed as "Oban Saints" on the GGPL website. There should be a map and directions to the ground of every club (surely all amateur clubs need this info at some point, especially with new clubs, as how else do they know where they are going on matchday?) So, where is this information currently distributed to clubs? For instance, there is a new club in the Strathclyde Saturday Morning League - "Dormy Forrest" - with no other info about the club. I've since found on Twitter that the name seems to be based on one guy's recollection of it being the name of a club his grandad played for in 1977. I'm not sure if "Forrest" is a mis-spelling of Forest. But apart from this, how do other clubs in the league know where they play? The Scottish Amateur FA requires that clubs register with them every season - surely this registration needs some assurance that the club have a ground to play on for the forthcoming season, and therefore, info about that ground (name, location) must be sent to the SAFA. So why does the club directory on their website not have home grounds for many of the clubs? It should be a relatively straightforward job to input the venue for each club. I mean, somebody has gone to the bother of inputting contact details (name, phone, email) for their secretaries. All it needs is a spreadsheet or suchlike to be updated once a year.

Last season, they lost 6-0 twice. They didn't lose any other games by more than a 4-goal margin. At home, their highest defeat was by 3. They even won 2 games. So they were definitely an improved side last season. Albion Rovers gave them their worst home defeat...

One thing that would help is a central resource for all results from all the leagues instead of having to hunt down the association pages (some associations don't have proper websites even, and post tables now and again on Facebook/Twitter, etc.) However, it took the Scottish Junior FA long enough to get all the Junior results on the one website. As far as I am aware: NORTH (10) Aberdeenshire is the only winter league here - there are 9 other summer amateur leagues (Inverness & District, North West Sutherland, Orkney, Lewis & Harris, Uist & Barra, Skye & Lochalsh, Caithness, Shetland, Shetland Works (the teams in this are essentially 3rd division teams in Shetland)) - these teams tend to play in the Highland Amateur Cup rather than the Scottish Amateur Cup. Shetland and Shetland Works should really amalgamate. Level of most of these teams is quite low. Some of the Inverness teams are pub teams. EAST (7) Midlands (Dundee and Angus), Perthshire, Stirling & District, Kingdom of Fife, Dundee Saturday Morning, Lothian & Edinburgh, Border - Dundee Saturday Morning could join Midlands. Level of some of the Fife, Stirling and Lothian teams is good. Dundee Saturday Morning has quite a few pub teams. WEST (9) Greater Glasgow Premier, Central Scottish, Scottish, Caledonian, Glasgow Colleges, Strathclyde Evangelical Churches, Ayrshire, Glasgow & District Saturday Morning, Strathclyde Saturday Morning - Several of these leagues in the Glasgow area could easily merge. The West seems to have the most overlap, as mentioned on this thread. One way to solve this is to make a "Glasgow Superleague" - that way, all the big teams from across the leagues could play each other. It could also be integrated into the pyramid (the best amateur teams are better than the lower-ranked junior teams). Not all amateur teams would wish to step up, but there are a few with better facilities and followings who would welcome the chance. The Ayrshire League and Glasgow League could then be feeders to the WoSFL. The Churches and Colleges leagues might want to continue playing like with like - I'm not sure what the standard is like, but I seem to remember one or two of the teams getting quite far in the Scottish Amateur Cup. As also mentioned in this thread, it would be good to see some sort of compromise between the afternoon/morning leagues. One problem would be the sheer number of teams, so the Glasgow League would need to be a pyramid in itself (rather than having something like 10 divisions). For the East - these leagues are pretty much set up nicely (geographically) already, and could be integrated into the pyramid under the EoSFL (Once the Tayside clubs decide where they want to go). For the North - the Aberdeenshire amateurs could slot in under the North Juniors, while the rest could be feeders to the North Caledonian League. Given the amount of time it's taken the juniors to get (almost) on board, I'm not holding my breath for any changes in the amateur game. But it does seem odd that there are teams like Colville Park beating senior teams like Burntisland Shipyard 7-0 in the Scottish Cup, but they are nominally in a lower league. I'm currently trying to put together just a simple list of all the amateur clubs in Scotland, along with the league and town they play in - but this involves going around all the websites, as the Scottish Amateur FA website info is out of date in most cases.

They did recover sufficiently to beat them 5-0 away in the replay though...

One way to estimate the strength is to use results in the "Irn-Bru Cup" 2017/18 - Cove Rangers 0-3 Crusaders 2018/19 - Coleraine 1-1 Formartine (2-1 pens) 2019/20 - Formartine 0-3 Glenavon 2019/20 - Connah's Quay 1-0 Cove Rangers Cove and Formartine are top clubs, and they performed reasonably well against the top Welsh and Northern Irish teams (seemingly performing better away from home). For comparison, the English clubs - Sutton United drew with Bohemians (League of Ireland), while Solihull Moors drew with Kelty Hearts. So a top Highland League club could probably hold their own against a top half National League team in England (certainly at home).

Isn't that why old men play bowls?

Apologies - my piss-take-o-meter needs recalibrated The only reason I can see for anyone obsessing with it is that it might spell the end of title/cup wins if they are promoted to a league where they are mid-table material. But this only applies to the teams who won league titles (which was quite a small set of clubs). For the also-ran junior teams, I can't see any reason for them obsessing about their grade. Surely they don't enjoy finishing next-to-bottom ten years in a row just because it has the junior label?

The backbone will come in handy to keep the pyjamas up when the elastic fails ... Seriously, it's the same sport - stop all this "giving up the grade". It doesn't matter what you call the "grade" you play in, you're playing football. And if clubs want to have the opportunity to play at as high a level as possible, who are you or anyone else to stand in their way? The juniors is a closed shop - there is no way to progress to a higher level for the better clubs. It's the equivalent of the League 2 clubs cutting themselves off from the rest of the SPFL and saying "right, we'll just play among ourselves forever, to hell with getting promoted", limiting themselves to "League 2" titles for all eternity. Whoop-de-doo!

As well as Vale of Atholl in Pitlochry, there also used to be the delightfully named Moulin City (not sure if they played in the village of Moulin, half a mile north of Pitlochry, or just took their name from it). In terms of possible participants for a Perthshire Cup: Luncarty have just gone senior, so that makes 4 (Saint Johnstone, Jeanfield Swifts, Kinnoull, Luncarty) In the juniors, there's also Scone Thistle, Blairgowrie and Coupar Angus who might go senior depending on how Tayside fits into the pyramid in the near future. I remember the likes of Dundee, Dundee United and St. Johnstone used to send an "XI" (mainly of youth and reserve players) to play Blairgowrie or Coupar Angus in pre-season friendlies. I'd imagine St. Johnstone would do the same if they were to play a Perthshire Cup.

Yes - the EoS and WoS would get weaker, but only to a certain extent - as the maximum these leagues can be "denuded" of teams is 16 (let's say the best 8 from the East and the best 8 from the West), and the real number will be a bit less (as there are a few good teams in the Lowland League who are just as good as many of the ex-juniors). Only 11 times in the entire history of the Scottish Junior Cup has a Tayside team reached the final, and only 5 different clubs have done so (and none in the last 15 years). I don't see anyone outside Lochee United, Carnoustie and Broughty being good enough to get promoted out of the EoS league. Tayport and Forfar West End have faded somewhat. For the East Region Superleague, no Tayside club finished in the Top 2 from 2008 until the exodus to the EoS League. In fact, for most of the last decade, most Tayside teams were regularly finishing in the bottom half of the table, and all of the 6 Tayside clubs who played in the East Super had an average position in the bottom half of the table.

So you've got 2 well-stocked areas (with 60-odd clubs spread over 3 or 4 tiers) and 2 single-league areas, with 14 or 15 clubs in each. Also the W and E have a much better calibre of clubs than the S and M (which, with the exception of 1 or 2 clubs are all Tier 7 and below material). It doesn't improve the pyramid in any way to have unequal leagues at the same level. The answer is a 3-way split (W, E, N) at Tier 5 - but that's not happening any time soon.

They might have been welcomed had they applied - but only 1 West team was in the opening set up. So from the start, it was East-heavy, whether or not that was the intention, and has been since then due to there being no West feeder league and not many clubs from the SoS seeking the step up, effectively making the EoS (100% east) the sole feeder. In the first 2 seasons, 2 West clubs applied, but since then, no new entries. Where would East Kilbride/Cumbernauld Colts have played had they been relegated? The South of Scotland League? BSC Glasgow could just about have thought about the EoS League, being based in Alloa.

Yes - and East Kilbride - that's what I said - 4 West teams. But at the beginning, there was only 1 (EK). 4 out of 16 isn't many. And all the West teams were essentially new to most people. East Kilbride 2010, Caledonian Braves 2011, BSC Glasgow 2014. Only Cumbernauld Colts had any history (I believe they played in amateur/youth competitions before joining). They applied to the LL as it was the only outlet for senior league football south of the HL/LL divide, not specifically because they wanted to play in a bigger Lowland area.

The 10-team lower level is a major obstacle to promotion/relegation being any more than 1 (or 1/2) a team at a time. 12-14-16 lends itself better to the concept, and gets rid of an unnecessary tier. But of course, the SPFL won't want to lose 3 clubs a year, even though they'd arguably be replaced by better-run, better-supported and more financially stable clubs (perhaps better - turkeys won't vote for Christmas). Also, the "non-league Superleague" is a non-starter simply because of the geographical divide in non-league football - it's wider than that in the SPFL - 8 teams from the HL and 8 from the LL in a single national league just wouldn't work - imagine Dalbeattie Star travelling to the Highlands/Aberdeenshire 7 times a season. The Lowland League, when it was set up, largely catered for what is known informally as "the East". The West didn't figure. The word "Lowland" was a perfect analogy to Highland. It was essentially a Lothian & Borders league, with a few Dumfries & Galloway teams in now and again (who usually found it difficult). East Kilbride was the only West team in it. Even now, there's only 4 West teams (one of which plays in the East), 2 D & G teams, and 10 East teams. The point is - whether or not it was set up with the whole of the south of Scotland in mind, it was essentially an East league, and the teams seriously thinking about promotion to it were all East. Now that the West is on board, that changes the whole dynamic. It was an opportunity to revisit the Highland/Lowland split - which when it was set up did not have to cater for West teams.

You misunderstand me - perhaps my clumsy wording - I am advocating getting rid of it altogether, not making it solely for East clubs. I also said East, not East Coast. So what I meant was - Lowland League > splits into East League/West League (both at same level as Highland League).

I'm from Perthshire originally, and Aberfeldy was considered quite a trek by some people, even within the county. There was a history of several of the now amateur Perthshire teams being senior, and playing in the Scottish Cup. I believe Breadalbane were one, and Vale of Atholl from Pitlochry played in the Scottish FA Cup as recently as the 1960s.

Yeah - what's wrong, too thick to comprehend? Ffs. Go back under your rock. Or do you want to go back and send that image to everyone who wrote posts before that I was simply replying to and see how long you last in here?

Instead of just disliking my post gogsy, please explain why you dislike it. Or are you an advocate of continuing with a 20-team league forever and cramming 380 games into a season, not counting cup matches? If so, please enlighten us as to why you think this is a good idea. Otherwise, I'll assume you just dislike without thinking.