RabidAl

The part-time and non-league clubs divide more proportionately into north, east and west regions than they do into just highland and lowland, for example; it keeps (admittedly, slightly arbitrary) boundaries to a minimum within a sub-national system that, by its nature, must have them - whereas a four-way split adds complexity; and there's good precedent for a three-way split with the juniors, which could also be useful if you want to try to convince them to sign up to the 'senior' pyramid.

The borders could just as easily be drawn at, say, Kincardine (east/west) and Angus/Aberdeenshire (north/east) to give a reasonable three-way split. I suppose grazza's conferences idea could be adapted to give West, North and East regional-national conferences of 8 teams each below the two national tiers of 16. So a 24-team tier 3 would be 3 parallel leagues of 8 teams, where they'd play teams within their own regional league twice each season, once at home and once away (for 14 games), and teams within the other two conferences once each season, just once at home or away (for a further 16 games), to give 30 games in total - the same number as with the top two tiers of 16. The benefits could be: - quality is maintained within each region by keeping the strongest clubs together, acting as a safe landing zone for relegated clubs and an attractive target for the best non-league clubs to aspire to; - having a good number of national fixtures to keep higher standards overall, yet only having 4 aways to each other region; - as with 16-16- it would bring more clubs to a higher level (24 at tier 3) whilst maintaining competitiveness and giving more competition than an equivalent national league of 24 teams; - good variety in fixtures with 23 opponents per season and no more than 2 league games versus any other team. E.g.: Conference West Conference North Conference East Queen's Park Elgin East Fife Annan Ath. Brora Arbroath Clyde Cove Montrose Stirling Formartine Berwick East Stirling. Turriff Edin. City Stirling Uni. Nairn Spartans Cumbernauld Inverurie LW Edin. Uni. East Kilbride Fraserburgh Whitehill W. {In terms of arranging the fixtures, I suppose you'd be looking at alternating between national and regional games ('matchdays') each weekend, with the regionals just being following a straight-forward fixtures list for 8 teams. The matchdays for fixtures on a national basis would possibly have to be arranged on the basis of each division being divided into two groups, with teams within each group then playing each team in an opposing group once, before the groups themselves would swap after the 4 matches, to then play each of the other groups in turn, except the group containing teams within their own region who they will play on the regional fixtures list as normal.} E.g: West North East 1 A 1 C 1 E 2 A 2 C 2 E 3 A 3 C 3 E 4 A 4 C 4 E 5 B 5 D 5 E 6 B 6 D 6 E 7 B 7 D 7 E 8 B 8 D 8 E So, in national matchdays 1-4, for group A (Conf. West, 1-4) and group C (Conf. North 1-4): A v C A v C A v C A v C 1) 1 v 1 2) 1 v 2 3) 1 v 3 4) 1 v 4 2 v 2 2 v 3 2 v 4 2 v 1 3 v 3 3 v 4 3 v 1 3 v 2 4 v 4 4 v 1 4 v 2 4 v 3 (h) v (a) (a) v (h) (h) v (a) (a) v (h).....and so on for the other groups. The national (N) matchdays could have the fixtures for the groups of teams scheduled as: N 1-4: group A vs group C, B v E, D v F. N 5-8: A v E, B v D, CvF. N 9-12: A v F, B v C, D v E. N 13-16: A v D, B v F, C v E. The regional (R ) matchdays could be interspersed with the national (N ) matchdays: N-R-N-R-N-R-N-R-N-R-N-R-N-R-N-R-N-R-N-R-N-R-N-R-N-R-N-R-N-N <-----teams play regionally or nationally on consecutive weeks. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10... ....30. <------fixture number. It might be the case that that there'd be a bit of flexibility within the system anyway, so clubs on the boundaries when promoted/relegated to the conferences, could apply and be accepted to West rather than East (Alloa, say) or North rather than East (Montrose) with the consent of participating clubs. If we want a pyramid, it seems boundary issues are in the nature of the beast.

The winners of the 3 regions and second bottom of the Championship are drawn into two play-off matches - two 'finals' if you like. The two winners of these play-off matches take the two available places in the Championship for the following season. 1st-4th in each region and any relegated teams qualify for the following season's league cup (under the new format). So that would be 12 teams from the regions, plus 16 from the Championship, plus 12 from the Premiership to give 40 for the summer group stage; the top 4 Premiership teams would come in after the groups as normal (depending upon Scottish Cup winners, etc).

^ Can't see the problem with a three-way split myself... Premiership Celtic CL Aberdeen EL Hearts EL St.Johnstone EL Ross Co. Inverness Dundee Motherwell Partick Killie Hamliton Dundee Utd Rangers Hibs PO Falkirk RL Raith Rvs RL (16) Championship Morton PR QoS PR St.Mirren PO Dumbarton PO Livingston PO Alloa Dunfermline Ayr Utd Peterhead Albion Rvs Stenny Airdrie Stranraer Cowdenbeath Forfar PO Brechin RL (16) West One North One East One Annan PO&LC Elgin PO&LC East Fife PO&LC Clyde LC Brora LC Arbroath LC Q.Park LC Cove LC Montrose LC Stirling LC Formartine LC Edin. City LC E.Stirling. Turriff Spartans Stirling Uni. Nairn Whitehill E.Kilbride Wick Selkirk Cumbernauld Forres Preston BSC Glasgow Fraserburgh Gala FD Dalbeattie Clachnacuddin Edin. Uni. Gretna '08 Inverurie Vale of Leithen Threave Keith Burntisland Glasgow Uni. Buckie Civil Service Wigtown & B Huntly Coldstream (14) Lossiemouth Hawick RA Deveronvale Berwick (er ?!) (16) (16) Newton Stew.* Strathspey Th. Linlithgow Rose St.Cuthbert W.* Fort William Girvan* Rothes Golspie Banks o' Dee (+3) (+5) (+1) Plenty of depth in each region, no real issues with travel, and all licenced except those marked (*) who are current SFA member clubs that are due to be licenced by the start of next season (so I've read elsewhere on P&B). The difficulty might be more about what comes below this?

Which relegation?! You lot probably. Enlighten me.

I think there'd be more meaningful games throughout the course of the season with 16-team leagues, as you'd have more teams clustered around similar numbers of points as we often see in larger leagues elsewhere. This increases the number of games against rivals (in terms of league position) and adds to the interest throughout the campaign. The meaningless games argument only really comes in towards the very end of the season, which I would mitigate with play-offs for Europe in the top tier, and in the tier below with the top five either in play-offs for promotion or being automatically promoted. Even without play-offs for Europe, you'd be looking at 7 of 16 teams qualifying for something at the season's end (assuming 2 automatically relegated, 1 in relegation play-off) in the top flight, a similar ratio to the English top tier (9/20). The increased number of teams being promoted and relegated adds freshness to the leagues, as does only playing each other twice. The corollary to your argument about clubs in tier two struggling with lower away supports (from their being fewer full-time opponents with 16 team top tiers) is that having a larger top tier supports more full-time clubs in that tier, through them having access to the larger away supports in that tier compared to the status quo, and this is also emphasised by more open promotion making it easier to access those larger crowds - i.e. less time in the 'wilderness' of a lower division. Although I don't really think it's necessary, I kept a 10-team third tier in that example since many folk wouldn't be too happy about simply punting 10 clubs out of the national set-up ('enforced regionalisation') and to address concerns about it being too big a jump from regional leagues to a tier 2 that included full-time clubs. I'd like to see the regions being as strong as possible - and think that this would happen pretty quickly with ambitious clubs from below and established clubs relegated from above - and at a high tier to keep them in national focus and give them some prestige. 16-16-10 would also take minimal effort in terms of re-construction, which they could tie for a fixed four year period along with the new League Cup since the old fixed period expires this coming summer. All that said, I still quite fancy three tiers of 14 with a 9/5 split after 26 games/2 rounds of fixtures (top 9 play each other again once, bottom 5 play each other again twice) for 34 games in total.

^ I like your conferences idea (although it's a little bit confusing to begin with) to keep some element of national football alongside more local matches, although your set-up does seem to keep the dreaded playing each team four times in a season. I think having a mixed part-time/full-time second tier is desirable to give the part-timers something achievable to aim for, to see what they can bring in terms of larger supports given the chance of promotion to the top tier, and also to give full-time clubs the stability to prepare for a push at the top tier without having to fight relegation to tier three each season (where their support bleeds away) as they do now. In terms of what we have right now, I think one of the reasons that licencing was brought in was to ensure that clubs falling out of the league (SPFL) can still play at a decent, consistent level. There are 20 clubs in the highland region that are licenced now (HL 18 + Banks o' Dee & Golspie Sutherland) and 22 in the lowland region (LL 15 + Burntisland, Civil Service, Coldstream, Glasgow Uni, Hawick, Linlithgow & Wigtown/Bladnoch). This would be enough for 2 divisions in each region, with some promotion/relegation between them at least giving some semblance of a pyramid if the HL2 and LL2 were less strict on licencing to allow for EoS, SoS and (maybe?) NCL/north juniors clubs access to the pyramid. There's also about enough depth, in terms of licencing, for an east/west split of the Lowland League at this point, which could enable our fourth tier to be shuffled in with these clubs in the near future. That said, I take the point that our national part-timers aren't going to be too keen on being regionalised unilaterally, and also that there could (initially) be an issue with the teams from regions not being strong enough to compete nationally. If the juniors could be tempted, an initial structure could look like: Premiership (16) I Championship (16) I Conference (0-??) I West Premier (16) - North Premier (16) - East Premier (16) I I I West One (16) - North One (16) - East One (16) I I I South/Galloway - Strathclyde - Lanarkshire - Ayrshire Aberdeenshire - Moray - Highland Tayside - Lothian/Borders - Fife - Forth With local, amateur leagues below this; the second tier of the regions varying in size to accommodate the imbalances of the pyramid and being useful for clubs coming up from the districts to adjust to the higher level; the Scottish Cup to reflect the size of the pyramid, taking in clubs from the amateurs at the bottom to the big clubs at the top.

Why are you advocating two regions if you are also saying that one would be much stronger? Wouldn't it make more sense to divide the south, into east and west regions? You more or less get an even three-way split of the clubs into West, North and East regions that way. It would likely keep the juniors interested by still being able to aim to become East/West of Scotland champions before a move up to a national league (tier two) that, ideally, would have some full-time clubs in it as an incentive to move to national football. Again, ideally, this would be supported by a proper all-through financial model without the large drop in revenues between tiers 1 and 2 that we have at the moment, so the full-timers would be reasonably well supported. So you'd hopefully be looking at tiers 3 and 4 being regionalised into West, North and East, with tiers 5 and 6 being three-four district leagues per region, then local, amateur leagues beyond that. That would be a pyramid that kept costs down to a level appropriate to the size of the club, enabled clubs to find their level, and linked the top of the game to the bottom. I can't see the point of the 18 and 15 team Highland and Lowland leagues we have at the moment with clubs just sitting there with virtually nothing to play for season in, season out - if there's no throughput of clubs then it aint a pyramid.

I think the OP's pretty good, but I'd like to see the introduction of play-offs for Europe if we had a bigger league. If the top 6 were at least guaranteed a European play-off place then the mid-table would be kept interesting for longer. As I understand it, the top 4 currently qualify for Europe IF no-one from outwith the top 4 wins the Scottish Cup. In a bigger league you could be looking at starting out a season with teams knowing that 1st and 2nd are guaranteed European football, with 3rd-6th guaranteed a play-off place. (A possible format being*: 3rd at home to 6th and 4th at home to 5th in mid-week one-off games, with the highest-ranked winner playing the one-off final at home. The winner guaranteed a European place, the runners up also qualifying if 1st, 2nd or the play-off winner subsequently wins the Scottish Cup. Or they could just have the play-offs after the Scottish Cup final, with 3 or 4 teams playing in a similar format to this depending upon who wins the Cup - the highest-ranked team playing the winner of the mid-week semi-final in the event of just 3 teams playing for the final European place, or even 4th-7th playing off would be a possibility.) This would allow 9 out of the 16 of the league positions to mean something at the end of the season, even if it's only relegation for the bottom two or three - a better ratio than we have at the moment (6/12) and an end to the 'bigger league equals more meaningless games' slander. At any rate, I think leagues of 16 allow a little more time for player development and for managers to attempt to implement more attractive football than small, cut-throat leagues do; they also enable more teams to be concentrated around a similar number of points during the season, therefore more changes in position and more interest to fans; and there'd be about 6 full-time clubs in the second tier with leagues of 16, which is fine when you consider that part-time clubs would being having a sniff of the promotion play-offs to the top tier each season and that'd bring some supporters oot. ------ *Edit, re-European play-offs: As it stands, the top four in the league qualify for Europe unless a team from outwith the top four wins the Scottish Cup. There wouldn't be space for European play-offs in the current calendar, but there would be ample room with a 16-team top tier, they'd add to the end-of-season interest, and would be a good target for middle-top end teams each season to keep things interesting throughout the league. If European play-offs were to take place before the Scottish Cup final, they could be between 3rd, 4th 5th and 6th. The winners of the play-offs would take a European place, the runners up would also take a place IF 1st or 2nd in the League or the European play-off winners then went on to win the Scottish Cup. If European play-offs were to take place after the Scottish Cup final, they could be: between 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th IF 1st, 2nd or 3rd won the Scottish Cup; between 3rd, 5th, 6th and 7th IF 4th place won the Scottish Cup; between 3rd, 4th, 6th and 7th, IF 5th place won the Scottish Cup; between 3rd, 4th, 5th and 7th IF 6th place won the Scottish Cup; between 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th IF 7th or below won the Scottish Cup. So teams and fans could know in advance of the season that finishing in the top 6-7 places would give them a crack at Europe.

About time we got Kelty Hearts involved in the Fife Cup?

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/sport/football/championship/fife-elite-academy-gets-4-star-status-1.855874

Yeah, ok, was just trying to square how they ended up meeting their projected loss target, whilst missing out on two of their bigger anticipated sources of income. Regarding Pitreavie, that sounds reasonable - complaint withdrawn.

Looking again at the paragraph in the Board statement with most of the financial details: We lost out on a budgeted third Scottish Cup tie, which as it turned out would have increased our income by £100,000. As a result of our disappointing league finish, we will lose out on £50,000 of budgeted income from the football authorities. Furthermore, £50,000 has been spent on legal fees trying to extricate our club from the lease at Pitreavie. However, the success of the Centenary Club Lifeline, the continuing support of the fans at the gate and better than expected commercial and hospitality income mean that we anticipate a trading loss (before depreciation) this season in the region of £250,000; more or less in line with our budget. The £250,000 trading loss 'more or less in line with our budget' can only be accurate if the 'better than expected' commercial and hospitality income has been in the region of £150,000, since that is the amount that they expected to gain from the 'budgeted' £50,000 income from a higher league finish, and £100,000 from a third Scottish Cup tie. Otherwise, there's an inherent contradiction in planning for a £250,000 loss, yet claiming to be surprised by £150,000 of that loss. There's also the fact that there were 3 Scottish Cup ties... I also don't like the fact that a so-called 'community club' is wasting £50,000 of supporters' hard-earned cash on paying legal fees trying to wriggle out of their commitments at Pitreavie, which is an important community facility that has served the Pars well over the years.

That's some length of statement that the Board have released! It's refreshing to have such an open and honest board, but the overall tone is very grave. I was surprised and disappointed about the operating losses of £250k - I'd rather have seen them not budgeting for any kind of cup run rather than projecting for two games in the Challenge cup, two in the League Cup and three in the Scottish. By the tone and content of a couple of paragraphs I wonder if next season might be the last of full-time football if there's no promotion to the Championship... Moving forward, we will continue to operate next season with a core of full time first team players, with potentially some part time players, although the practicalities of this will be discussed with the new Manager. The intention would be to operate with a reduced squad next season of 18-20 first team players (plus eight Under 19 players), but crucially with a core of players who know what is required in this league. In SPFL League One, the Centenary Club Lifeline and season ticket sales effectively keep our club alive, and provide the only platform, other than promotion to the SPFL Championship, to allow our club to operate as a full time club again next season. I'd rather see them start next season part-time if it means they don't have to run the risk of another operating loss. How about Greig McDonald for next Pars gaffer? Ex-par who knows the club, knows his way around the lower leagues and part-time players, and has a promotion under his belt with Stirling Albion.

Seaman

Perfidious

Love it up there, but the length of the ridge walk plus the long (for me) walk in from the train station is a bit of a killer. Walk alongside the Tilt is a favourite though.

Labiatae

Bush

Thatch

Sterling

Rawhide

I think most folk have anxiety issues related to their work chief - it's pretty normal for people (those who aren't totally conceited anyway). I find the best way to deal with my anxiety issues is to really just focus down on the job that I'm doing, paying attention to the nuts and bolts of the thing and not letting my mind wonder too much. My mantra is: pay attention to what you're doing, when you're doing it. Then, when you've done the job, you can recall that you've done it, and it puts your mind at rest for your down-time. If you never really switch off from work, you'll never really be switched on at work! Or something like that! When you talk about going AWOL from work - i've been there. I had a really bad panic attack at work years ago and simply stopped going. It precipitated all sorts of periods of depression and a long-term social anxiety disorder and has left a huge scar on my life. My advice is to go in to work (or whatever situation you are afraid of) and really, literally, just take it piece by piece and day by day until you've strung some weeks together and proved to yourself that you can do it. Stopping going in to work really is the thin end of the wedge. Keep yourself involved in things. Everything takes practice, you're allowed to make mistakes - everyone does!

Suffered from depression on and off for years. Decades really. Got seriously bad when I had a major break down (not my first) about 8 years ago. Living alone and being long-term unemployed exaggerated it. It's like living without any emotional connection to anything at all. Total numbness. Blank. Refused drugs to treat it and found that CBT just made me even more paranoid - it doesn't seem to work if you're naturally very introspective. Several breakdowns have come and gone. Putting the pieces back together one more time. No more P&B for me though - need more face-to-face contact. Good luck to you all!

Ease