LongTimeLurker

The only future tier 6 feeders that the HL are negotiating with are the NCL and north region juniors. There is no indication that the HL currently view Broughty Ferry as part of their catchment and have any plans to cater to it now that junior clubs have crashed the pyramid party, because Tayside never seems to rate a mention when the issue of tier 6 feeders gets discussed by or reported on in HL only circles. Broughty Athletic can always put an application into the EoS like Luncarty did.

The LL will need to agree a second automatic relegation place to speed things along on that or we could easily be looking at a decade for T5 to start to get up to speed.

Nothing wrong with being an amateur club. Just making the point that smaller junior clubs nowadays have very few regular supporters that are likely to ever post on here in much the same way as amateur clubs, so it probably isn't FWF's penchant for spreadsheets that is the reason why nobody is posting about Stoneyburn in this thread.

Keep your identity politics bigotry out of this thread.

Have been to Kenya. Nairobi in rush hour needs to be seen to be believed.

Take Bo'ness and Lithgae out of the equation and there were never that many posts about the east on here in the first place. Most east junior clubs even at superleague level tended to have relatively small core supports given how many SPFL clubs also tend to be close by. Forfar West End vs Forfar Athletic or Sauchie vs Alloa? Most potential supporters that don't travel to watch a larger full-time club elsewhere chose the latter option locally as the fitba's a wee bit better. Beyond that how many posts would you realistically ever expect about glorified amateur clubs like Syngenta, Harthill, Stoneyburn or West Calder? There have always been very few posts about the north as most north stuff gets posted on Fitba North. Even on Fitba North though interest in junior football is close to non-existent because who is going to follow Forres Thistle rather than Forres Mechanics or Glentanar rather than Aberdeen? Almost nobody. This subforum always tended to be west dominated because there is still a decent level of interest in a significant number of clubs there. They are all away to the WoS subforum now. There still seems to be plenty of life in that, so nothing much has changed in the big scheme of things from what I can see.

Agree that the HL and NCL are unlikely to ever be a factor on this, but think the key point is that participating in both the SJC and SCC is unlikely to be sustainable long term for the 50 or so west region clubs that are still in the SJFA. Either the SJC is going to slowly shrivel up and die or humpty dumpty will be put back together again where a nationally-branded cup is concerned. There is no need to even add an extra round if the remaining east and north region clubs were integrated into the SCC under SJC branding. That would be the common sense solution, if people in the southern portion of West Lothian could bury the hatchet and finally move beyond the senior vs junior thing in the way that happened in the west region and should be happening soon in the north region. Not holding my breath on rational thought being the prevailing approach on this though...

Might be a link to Shettleston? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shettleston_F.C.

The north region are supposed to be on the verge of becoming a tier 6 feeder as part of the SJFA, while the WoS apparently can still be represented on the SJFA management committee if they want to be, which I suspect might turn out to be the case if they vote in all the old west region officeholders. This junior vs senior thing probably has no neat clear cut resolution in other words. All the SJFA really does is in the larger scheme of things is run the junior cup. If the dueling banjo types in the southern portion of West Lothian can ever get around to resolving their feud it might be good to see humpty dumpty put back together again in terms of having a national cup rather than the south challenge cup, which doesn't seem to quite capture the public imagination in the same way.

Did you miss the obvious piece of flame bait? There is no need to have both the LL/EoS and east region running in parallel. The sooner there is a single league structure the better.

It's the HL that gets to decide who to make an agreement with as they are already recognised as the tier 5 league. If the north region have to sign off as well before the NCL can get in, it will be because it suits the HL for things to unfold that way.

^^^FWF recently used a 2010 version of the Highland League constitution to try to claim that you don't need to be licensed to join the HL. In a similar way outdated information is being recycled here because it fits a preferred narrative. This recent flurry of posts on this topic was initiated by info from an NCL officeholder linked to Tain St Duthus that was posted on Fitba North. According to him the NCL have agreed to the HL's terms to be a tier 6 feeder, and they are now waiting for the response from the north juniors to determine whether this goes ahead in 2020-21. http://www.fitbanorth.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=8529#p733592 This was followed up on here by this:

It would be easy enough to do, but this is not what is currently happening. Only the NCL and the north region are negotiating with the HL in the relevant working group and the future status of Tayside never even rates a mention when this gets discussed in HL circles online or gets reported by media outlets from north of Stonehaven. It only ever gets brought up by people on P&B as far as I can see.

No idea how you can reach that conclusion when the various parties in the PWG meetings were given a set of options to discuss that included Option Z. The postures adopted by both the SJFA and LL/EoS blocked anything other than the emergence of the WoS from being a viable pathway for pyramid entry by clubs from the west. Under those circumstances setting up the WoS and allowing ongoing SJFA membership was the sensible course of action, because there was no other way to first break the logjam and then manage to keep all the west clubs in the same structure. In the short term the emergence of the WoS as a tier 6 LL feeder was definitely a decisive victory for the LL/EoS over the SJFA in blazer politics terms. Longer term, however, the east is almost certainly going to wind up as the most under-represented part of the country at tier 5 because of the structure that is now in place. The HL can probably be viewed as the main long term winners, especially if they now get to effectively jettison Tayside in de facto terms by only agreeing to negotiate with the north region and NCL as tier 6 feeders.

Maybe I'm too cynical, but what the LL will probably do is try to link the rule change to some concession from the SPFL that favours them. Automatic relegation where Club 42 is concerned might be a bridge too far but well worth taking a swing at to see what the counter offer would be. I suspect the SPFL's first response on hearing that was the threats you describe rather than further negotiation. Time will tell on how it all unfolds but Tayside going into the LL catchment still looks like the probable outcome. No point getting het up over this stuff. The cooler head that thinks strategically a few steps ahead usually wins in these types of negotiations. The former EoS premier clubs that were in at the foundation of the LL and most of the larger ex-junior present day EoS premier clubs will probably be the losers long term at this point in terms of status in another decade or so once the LL becomes west dominated. They really should have thought more carefully about the longer term implications of Option Z when it was on the table rather than going all cherry menthol about Tom Johnston and a parallel east feeder.