Team 16?

[Patches O'Houlihan]

The payments from the SFA for licensed clubs is nowhere near £10k, try more than half of that. I also think you are wrong on Scottish Cup payments.

[calmac25]

The payments from the SFA for licensed clubs is nowhere near £10k, try more than half of that. I also think you are wrong on Scottish Cup payments.

I got told about the payments by someone I would trust on the matter so see no need to disbelieve it. Though I believe your involved with bsc so you may have other inside info.

The Scottish cup payments being less for unlicensed teams is from the SFA club licencing documents. It doesn't mention qualifiers specifically though

[Patches O'Houlihan]

37 minutes ago, calmac25 said:

I got told about the payments by someone I would trust on the matter so see no need to disbelieve it. Though I believe your involved with bsc so you may have other inside info.

The Scottish cup payments being less for unlicensed teams is from the SFA club licencing documents. It doesn't mention qualifiers specifically though

It was definetly less than £5k last season. Could be that clubs above entry level got more??

[Burnie_man]

2 hours ago, craigkillie said:

 

People need to stop focusing on what did happen or what should have happened in the past, and work on what is going to be the best for the non-league game in the future. 

There shouldn't really be any major issue with loosening the standards in the short-term, for example by giving Junior clubs two years' grace.  It's not as though the Lowland League clubs are any worse off for having their license in place earlier.

 

 

As you have seen from this thread, it's very difficult to get people to forget about what has happened in the past and to focus on where we should be heading for the benefit of the game, and how we actually get there.

[non_sequitur]

10 hours ago, WaffenThinMint said:

Derail the thread? Says the clown that's been droning on about Junior entry & their "rightful place" in the pyramid in a thread about who is Team 16 in the Lowland League.

Just like every other single Lowlands League section thread ends up the second you arrive - on & on & on & on about how the non-league Seniors, the SFA & everyone else should jump through hoops & "compromise" with the uncompromising: those now wanting a slice of the action they sneered was doomed to fail at the time now they've realised it's not.

(And that's another five posts on this thread in under 2 hours)

This time, how about sticking me on ignore which you said you'd done last year but like everything else you've said to date in the LL section has turned out to be bullshit?

The Lowlands League is here to stay, the pyramid is here to stay & the Juniors can f**k off until such times as they give tangible demonstrations of a willingness to work with the rest of Scottish football rather than looking to pick their pockets. Deal with it.

Been keeping tabs oan this thread and been lots of guid points made I wish some of these fowk were running oor game instead of the tubes we have but you come along and post a load of shite and attack fowk for no reason. Your the clown nae doubt about that.

[FairWeatherFan]

Just place the Junior Super Leagues at tier 6 with the same criteria for promotion as the EoS/SoS. Gets everyone in the same room, pushes club licensing, organises a singular calendar to allow for potential promotional playoffs.

Nothing has to change for those that are happy with the status quo but it allows for the evenutal creep of Juniors into the Highland & Lowland for those that seek promotion. Also more teams in the Juniors would likely get licensed allowing for the idea of splitting the Lowland into East & West.

Asking for anything more dramatic doesn't seem likely to happen.

[non_sequitur]

My tuppence worth. I agree with most of what burnieman says and most fowk with fitba in their heart should do as well to many who want their ain wee baw to play with on all sides. Shippy should be playing other Fife teams and no trailing to Peebles or Tweedmouth or Eyemouth every other week its daft. One game every year in the Scottish is nae reason to keep in that league team is struggling anyway.

[VodkaTap]

Why should the Juniors need a grace period to get a licence ??

There are 11 clubs outwith the LL who already have an entry level licence

If we exclude Threave who accepted relegation from the LL ( and for accuracy - just didn't reapply for the vacant spot)

Golspie Sutherland play in the North Caledonian League

3 junior clubs have a licence 

6 other clubs plus one in process

This was all done with a lot less funds than that available to the top league clubs in the junior ranks.

The negotiating period will be more than two years anyway so that time could be used to get that relatively straightforward licence.

 

But it doesn't matter about any of the views on here anyway.

We are all simply p*ssing in the wind until someone in authority decided that change needs to happen.

[parsforlife]

5 hours ago, craigkillie said:

 

People need to stop focusing on what did happen or what should have happened in the past, and work on what is going to be the best for the non-league game in the future. 

There shouldn't really be any major issue with loosening the standards in the short-term, for example by giving Junior clubs two years' grace.  It's not as though the Lowland League clubs are any worse off for having their license in place earlier.

 

that isn't looking at the past. a fully licenced tier 5 is in place, that can't be broken. 

[WaffenThinMint]

5 hours ago, energyzone said:

 

Or alternatively until the authorities present a solution to them that is reasonably attractive?

And what solution might that be? Strange part is, every time they are asked, it's "we'll get back to you" & that's the last anyone hears.

But no one is under any illusions as to what they want - everything thrown into a set up run by them where no club licensing is required or anything else where money is spent on anything but players (usually in a brown envelope, in the local supermarket car park) & fans are expected to watch games in any old shit hole (see St Roch's utter disgrace as a worked example) because "that's the Junior way".

There's a reason - & a damn good one - why the Scottish Juniors are regarded as the bumpkins of British football: apart from a few clubs like Auchinleck & Linlithgow, most of them have an allergic reaction to anything that remotely smacks of the modern - try starting a thread in the Junior section about 3G or 4G pitches for starters (never mind floodlit matches!) & watch what happens, let alone club licensing. There's this mindset that they somehow are the sacred keepers of "real" football, a timewarp back into a Beamish style "good old days" where hard standings made of auld railway sleepers, half cooked pies with a slither of minced god-knows-what at the bottom & watery Bovril or tea, & games played on pitches not fit for growing potatoes is "guid enough me, like ma faither un his afore him": the very worst type of inverted snobbery that's been the bane of the Scottish game for a century (& which today's fan - the future of the game - understandably turns their nose up at). 

And I'm sorry, but having read reams of this shit over in the Junior section for eight years, if you think that mindset is disappearing any time soon, you're going to be very disappointed.

Since 2007 their league & Junior Cup winners have enjoyed free entry into the Scottish Cup - as a token of good faith towards a more integrated set up & let them see what was to gain. When the Lowlands League was created - despite the Juniors doing everything they could to stop it - the SFA would have been well within their right to take those free entries away. They didn't, as a matter of good faith. It's now three years hence, & almost a decade of the Juniors being allowed into the Scottish Cup proper, & still the Juniors are as hidebound as ever. Face it, most of them are not even interested in evolving, let alone negotiating or compromise.

There comes a time when all the good faith in the world isn't going to disguise the truth matters are going nowhere fast, & that you have to keep moving on without others who simply have no interest in changing - ever. So like I said, from now on Junior clubs should only take part in SFA run competitions if they're licensed clubs - and leave the 99% of the Juniors only interested in the licensing of their "social clubs" to come to glory or grief within their own system as fate determines.

[craigkillie]

1 hour ago, parsforlife said:

that isn't looking at the past. a fully licenced tier 5 is in place, that can't be broken. 

 

Preserving a 100% licensed Tier 5 every season at all costs would present a major stumbling block in the long-term progression of the pyramid.  Tier 5 absolutely should be licensed, but relaxing that position on a one-off basis would hardly cause the entire system to collapse.

We're talking about a short-term relaxation of the licensing rules in order to facilitate a major (positive) change to Tier 5 and to the pyramid as a whole.  It would be hard to disagree that Tier 5 would be stronger if there was an East/West system including the Juniors, and if a two season grace period is what it takes to make that happen then I don't see what the big problem is.  In the long term, that would lead to a big increase in the number of licensed clubs, which can only be a good thing

[Doonhamer doon south]

Wait is there a west east thing going on or is it just on here?

Since lowland league was set up how many clubs have since got a licence. A couple have. More clubs are getting a licence. Over time more will.

We don't know what will happen in the future but I suspect that the lower tiers will become better. Better quality better crowds. As more clubs over the years get licenced promotion relegation will sort it's self out. I think the juniors will jump over especially the bigger clubs. But not for long time as things stand. From what people have said the juniors are supported by the older fan now in 20 years unfortunately a lot of those fans may no longer be around. If the juniors can't bring on more fans then they may feel jumping into the pyramid is there only way of survival. Some clubs might see that now. Who knows.

I hope the lower leagues will get sorted but personally I think time will sort it and it will evolve into something better. And it will be done by individual clubs bettering themselves than through governing bodies or radical change.

[non_sequitur]

2 hours ago, WaffenThinMint said:

And what solution might that be? Strange part is, every time they are asked, it's "we'll get back to you" & that's the last anyone hears.

But no one is under any illusions as to what they want - everything thrown into a set up run by them where no club licensing is required or anything else where money is spent on anything but players (usually in a brown envelope, in the local supermarket car park) & fans are expected to watch games in any old shit hole (see St Roch's utter disgrace as a worked example) because "that's the Junior way".

There's a reason - & a damn good one - why the Scottish Juniors are regarded as the bumpkins of British football: apart from a few clubs like Auchinleck & Linlithgow, most of them have an allergic reaction to anything that remotely smacks of the modern - try starting a thread in the Junior section about 3G or 4G pitches for starters (never mind floodlit matches!) & watch what happens, let alone club licensing. There's this mindset that they somehow are the sacred keepers of "real" football, a timewarp back into a Beamish style "good old days" where hard standings made of auld railway sleepers, half cooked pies with a slither of minced god-knows-what at the bottom & watery Bovril or tea, & games played on pitches not fit for growing potatoes is "guid enough me, like ma faither un his afore him": the very worst type of inverted snobbery that's been the bane of the Scottish game for a century (& which today's fan - the future of the game - understandably turns their nose up at). 

And I'm sorry, but having read reams of this shit over in the Junior section for eight years, if you think that mindset is disappearing any time soon, you're going to be very disappointed.

Since 2007 their league & Junior Cup winners have enjoyed free entry into the Scottish Cup - as a token of good faith towards a more integrated set up & let them see what was to gain. When the Lowlands League was created - despite the Juniors doing everything they could to stop it - the SFA would have been well within their right to take those free entries away. They didn't, as a matter of good faith. It's now three years hence, & almost a decade of the Juniors being allowed into the Scottish Cup proper, & still the Juniors are as hidebound as ever. Face it, most of them are not even interested in evolving, let alone negotiating or compromise.

There comes a time when all the good faith in the world isn't going to disguise the truth matters are going nowhere fast, & that you have to keep moving on without others who simply have no interest in changing - ever. So like I said, from now on Junior clubs should only take part in SFA run competitions if they're licensed clubs - and leave the 99% of the Juniors only interested in the licensing of their "social clubs" to come to glory or grief within their own system as fate determines.

 

Probably a dozen clubs in junior have plastic pitches wi lights I see the Bankies and yoker are getting one and loads of them are part of these local community clubs with kids teams. Kirky building a great new ground. Yer talking pish aboot juniors living in the past, weve lost clubs fae oor league to join them, no bad for a backward league. Fowk like you are the problem.

[Hillonearth]

3 hours ago, WaffenThinMint said:

And what solution might that be? Strange part is, every time they are asked, it's "we'll get back to you" & that's the last anyone hears.

But no one is under any illusions as to what they want - everything thrown into a set up run by them where no club licensing is required or anything else where money is spent on anything but players (usually in a brown envelope, in the local supermarket car park) & fans are expected to watch games in any old shit hole (see St Roch's utter disgrace as a worked example) because "that's the Junior way".

There's a reason - & a damn good one - why the Scottish Juniors are regarded as the bumpkins of British football: apart from a few clubs like Auchinleck & Linlithgow, most of them have an allergic reaction to anything that remotely smacks of the modern - try starting a thread in the Junior section about 3G or 4G pitches for starters (never mind floodlit matches!) & watch what happens, let alone club licensing. There's this mindset that they somehow are the sacred keepers of "real" football, a timewarp back into a Beamish style "good old days" where hard standings made of auld railway sleepers, half cooked pies with a slither of minced god-knows-what at the bottom & watery Bovril or tea, & games played on pitches not fit for growing potatoes is "guid enough me, like ma faither un his afore him": the very worst type of inverted snobbery that's been the bane of the Scottish game for a century (& which today's fan - the future of the game - understandably turns their nose up at). 

And I'm sorry, but having read reams of this shit over in the Junior section for eight years, if you think that mindset is disappearing any time soon, you're going to be very disappointed.

Since 2007 their league & Junior Cup winners have enjoyed free entry into the Scottish Cup - as a token of good faith towards a more integrated set up & let them see what was to gain. When the Lowlands League was created - despite the Juniors doing everything they could to stop it - the SFA would have been well within their right to take those free entries away. They didn't, as a matter of good faith. It's now three years hence, & almost a decade of the Juniors being allowed into the Scottish Cup proper, & still the Juniors are as hidebound as ever. Face it, most of them are not even interested in evolving, let alone negotiating or compromise.

There comes a time when all the good faith in the world isn't going to disguise the truth matters are going nowhere fast, & that you have to keep moving on without others who simply have no interest in changing - ever. So like I said, from now on Junior clubs should only take part in SFA run competitions if they're licensed clubs - and leave the 99% of the Juniors only interested in the licensing of their "social clubs" to come to glory or grief within their own system as fate determines.

Excellent tears’n’snotters rant, but not really borne out by any form of reality.

You’ve made the mistake that many do of thinking of the Juniors as some monolithic bloc, when in reality each club has its own story to tell. With 160-odd clubs, it’s patently obvious that the cookie-cutter club setup you apparently prefer is unlikely ever to be achievable.

Likewise, the vivid picture of decay you paint is almost exclusively only true at the lowest end of the scale – we can all think of a couple of grounds that look like something out of the Flintstones, but they tend to be the ones that are run almost against the odds by a few dedicated volunteers without the means to do much about it. It would be a shame to sweep them aside in pursuit of the conformity you desire – a form of football Darwinism if you like.

It’s also disingenuous to say that facilities are the be all and end all of any overall decline in attendances – if that were the case, the likes of Ainslie Park would be full to the rafters every other week. The real cause of the overall slump in attendances throughout the game over the last 20 years is that thing that sits in the corner of your living room; “today’s fan – the future of the game” is more and more likely to be planning their weekend round Palace v Stoke on Sky on Sunday afternoon rather than going to an actual game tomorrow.

You specifically mentioned St Roch’s who are currently rebuilding since near-extinction less than a decade ago. While I wouldn’t be comfortable with my club associating themselves so closely with another in the way they’ve done with their historic Celtic connections, it’s clearly working for them, and I’d say that they’re turning into a more genuine community-based club than many others who have taken the box-ticking ,certificate-based approach to community engagement.

There are elements of what you say I agree with however; the ridiculous arms race to fund player wages at the expense of development of grounds etc. It has to be said that doesn’t only happen at non-league level however – we can see it all through the sport – it only seems more egregious as you go down the grades and see teams otherwise on the bones of their arse doing it.

In terms of being hidebound and married to tradition, it’s interesting to note that when we moved a fixture to last Friday in order to prevent a clash with the following day’s OF game , the most vocal opposition on here to doing so didn’t actually come from other Junior supporters, rather from fans of senior clubs – a Thistle fan who obviously had the hump that no-one had ever switched a fixture to avoid a clash with one of THEIR games, and an Arbroath fan who from his haddock-scented wee bubble couldn’t seem to understand the logistics of being – apologies for extending the marine metaphor – a small fry in the same pool as two big fish.

[Burnie_man]

55 minutes ago, Hillonearth said:

Excellent tears’n’snotters rant, but not really borne out by any form of reality.

New/Redeveloped Grounds

Kelty Hearts (3g/lights)

Broxburn Athletic (3g/lights)

Blackburn Utd (3g/lights)

Newtongrange Star (lights)

Carnoustie Panmure

Jeanfield Swifts

Tranent

West Calder Utd

 

Lights

Linlithgow Rose (and stand)

Sauchie (and stand)

Easthouses Lily

Dunbar Utd

Penicuik Athletic

Dalkeith Thistle

Bathgate Thistle

 

That’s just off the top of my head, Rosyth are also looking to move to new facilities with 3G I believe.

 

In additional to that lot, there are more clubs that are part of the SFA Community Club scheme and clubs such as Hill of Beath, Haddington, St.Andrews, Tayport, Musselburgh, Glenrothes, Dundee North End, Fauldhouse, Lochgelly, Newburgh etc etc etc all with excellent well maintained grounds. There are very few grounds that could be described as run down hovels.    That’s just in the East Region, I’m sure those in the West and North can provide plenty similar examples.

 

Good to deal in facts, not fictional nonsense.  Anyway, back to the topic………….

[Burnie_man]

5 hours ago, VodkaTap said:

We are all simply p*ssing in the wind until someone in authority decided that change needs to happen.

 

Sadly correct.

[monthelie']

4 hours ago, WaffenThinMint said:

And what solution might that be? Strange part is, every time they are asked, it's "we'll get back to you" & that's the last anyone hears.

But no one is under any illusions as to what they want - everything thrown into a set up run by them where no club licensing is required or anything else where money is spent on anything but players (usually in a brown envelope, in the local supermarket car park) & fans are expected to watch games in any old shit hole (see St Roch's utter disgrace as a worked example) because "that's the Junior way".

There's a reason - & a damn good one - why the Scottish Juniors are regarded as the bumpkins of British football: apart from a few clubs like Auchinleck & Linlithgow, most of them have an allergic reaction to anything that remotely smacks of the modern - try starting a thread in the Junior section about 3G or 4G pitches for starters (never mind floodlit matches!) & watch what happens, let alone club licensing. There's this mindset that they somehow are the sacred keepers of "real" football, a timewarp back into a Beamish style "good old days" where hard standings made of auld railway sleepers, half cooked pies with a slither of minced god-knows-what at the bottom & watery Bovril or tea, & games played on pitches not fit for growing potatoes is "guid enough me, like ma faither un his afore him": the very worst type of inverted snobbery that's been the bane of the Scottish game for a century (& which today's fan - the future of the game - understandably turns their nose up at). 

And I'm sorry, but having read reams of this shit over in the Junior section for eight years, if you think that mindset is disappearing any time soon, you're going to be very disappointed.

Since 2007 their league & Junior Cup winners have enjoyed free entry into the Scottish Cup - as a token of good faith towards a more integrated set up & let them see what was to gain. When the Lowlands League was created - despite the Juniors doing everything they could to stop it - the SFA would have been well within their right to take those free entries away. They didn't, as a matter of good faith. It's now three years hence, & almost a decade of the Juniors being allowed into the Scottish Cup proper, & still the Juniors are as hidebound as ever. Face it, most of them are not even interested in evolving, let alone negotiating or compromise.

There comes a time when all the good faith in the world isn't going to disguise the truth matters are going nowhere fast, & that you have to keep moving on without others who simply have no interest in changing - ever. So like I said, from now on Junior clubs should only take part in SFA run competitions if they're licensed clubs - and leave the 99% of the Juniors only interested in the licensing of their "social clubs" to come to glory or grief within their own system as fate determines.

You've obviously not read the thread on Renfrew's new ground, which most seem to agree is the way forward.

[newcastle broon]

1 hour ago, Burnie_man said:

 

 

Good to deal in facts, not fictional nonsense.  Anyway, back to the topic………….

The topic being team 16.

Position has been filled so let's close the topic........

[Burnie_man]

5 minutes ago, newcastle broon said:

The topic being team 16.

Position has been filled so let's close the topic........

In yer dreams

[parsforlife]

 

Preserving a 100% licensed Tier 5 every season at all costs would present a major stumbling block in the long-term progression of the pyramid. 

Why? Licencing is comfortabley within the reach of most super-league clubs. There is no reason not be moving towards it already. However even recognising the horrendously slow rate of progress within the juniors if they are given fair notice of a LL split they should all be able to achieve a licence before the start of the first season with 3 regions.

Don't see the harm in giving juniors the time to get licenced whilst preserving a fully licenced tier 5.