timeforchange

Your points are all good points but there is no way you can tell how well clubs will do in cup ties or how the weather will be over the winter point 1 you play some midweek games at start of season and get knocked out all the cups in the first round with no weather problems and your finished early point 2 The west of Scot cup final is being played this weekend as it’s the only date that is safe for playing at Broadwood because the ladies teams play out of there and they presumably will have priority point 3 The 2 leg semi finals are okay as long as you are not in other cups that are being played around the same time and you are involved in them also point 4 It looks like if your club is successful in cup ties and get through to the later stages of all the cups you are punished for being successful there is so many scenarios that change every season and not always the same clubs involved that it’s very hard for the fixture secretary to predict and with lots of restrictions on dates etc that are hampering the process. If you have an Astro facility for example most of your games will be on and if you have lights that would help also but then you have that the 2 teams have to agree any fixture swaps which doesn’t help either if a team has 3 games left and a team has 10 games why would the team with 3 agree to a swap and let the team with 10 games be forced to play 3 games in 7 days although there is some who would like teams to be playing Monday , Tuesday and Wednesday which in our new professional set up doesn’t make sense and there is nobody in the SPFL who would do it but that’s what some want senseless

Problem is solved some are wanting the clubs who still have games to play and need to catch up too play Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and so on till caught up it’s actually very laughable. I wonder what they would want if they had actually won their cup ties and got through to the latter stages of them all

They say things even out over a season. But how can things like that even out. How on earth can an official give that second penalty from his position. What did he see that no one else saw? Managers , coaches , players lose there heads over things like that and as part of the Sfa disciplinary procedures get banned about saying things but it’s there for all to see not a club in Scotland would be happy if that is given against them and that’s just the second penalty. I seriously hope the official has a look at the great filming the David done of the game and learns from his mistake and general positional sense when making decisions or guessing whichever way you want to see it. One for the referees training development officer to look at

Very good detailed explanation and some detail of why the pyramid system is flawed. The Sfa wanted a Wosfl to balance out there structure. I don’t think they expected the volume of clubs to all move over but clubs were reluctant to not move incase they were left out. Then came the obstacles slowly being put in place regarding promotion and relegation etc, criteria for promotion , licences required etc the list goes on and I’m 100% certain it’s not finished at that yet. Then you have the low and league letting clubs buy into their league how is that fair and sporting integrity when they can’t be promoted and it stops others from genuine promotion. It is the correct to have a pyramid system but not under the current way it works

Hearing the league finishing date is being extended by 1 week now if the latest is to believed no doubt all will confirmed very soon

Players welfare for starters they have day jobs as well. Trying to recover and rest from previous games. If the league want to be professional then it needs to be correctly addressed for all clubs for this senario happening. It happened last year and league was extended it might not suit all understandably but that is not the answer

The league have

There has now been another 2 games postponed on 22nd April and 24 th April to allow the semi final to be played. League has to be finished on 11 th May when are the 2 games going to be fitted there is no spare dates. What if Shotts happened to beat Darvel final is on 28th so game on 27th possibly would be postponed and possibly the 30th as well

It would appear that if you get a good run in the cups it impacts on your league game scheduling. The problem is any postponements and a run in cups causes the fixture secretary problems as most teams will need to sit and wait to play the same team. Where the current rules don’t work is if the fixture secretary doesn’t issue a fixture and a club with a few games to catch up on and they have a team to play with maybe only 2 games left and they want to bring forward a game both teams need to agree to the fixture change and that is not helpful. We now have health and players wellbeing to respect and also remember that these are part time players who have work commitments. SPFL teams don’t have the fixture scheduling that some of Wosfl teams have. This is a very important issue that needs to be seriously addressed before god forbid there is a serious incident.

If as suggested that Alex McDowell is anti pyramid which I don’t think is true he is maybe just be realistic about it. Most clubs I think wanted a pyramid system in place so they could go as far as they could if they wanted and had the finances to do so. The problem is a lot higher up than that. Do the sfa and the clubs in other tiers really want to be challenged by clubs coming up through a proper pyramid system ? I’m not so sure they move the goalposts and change the criteria every year to suit their own agendas and protect themselves. The league set up was a carve up right from the start so the sfa could have a more regional set up under its umbrella as there was no west set up previously and now it’s more aligned to their needs of working. George Fraser was set up when the league was being formed right at the start their has been a few false promises although I still think the pyramid system is the correct model but there needs to be more alignment with promotions and relegation no deals or obstacles in the way

Been some amount of rain over the past couple of days . Think there will be a few in doubt tomorrow. Certainly a bit drier today but whether that’s enough or not is another story

Martin Laughlan

Somebody must have gone on it last week going on it when it was far too soft and got stuck in there machine leaving massive tracks on it

I’m not so sure it’s a cheap option based on the costs involved to host a recent final that was played there.

Forecast not good for this week and pitches will be worse if it’s frosty all week takes roughly 2 days for the frost to come out ground to give it a chance