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Junior football, what is the future?


Burnie_man

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1 hour ago, Cyclizine said:

Yep. Going down that route will probably end up with a border going through Paisley...

There's been a conscious decision in Scotland to have a hard North/South boundary where you're one side or the other, full stop. This obviously means you end up with variable numbers on either side.

The variable numbers I have zero issue with - but there are clubs in the Tayside area who are already split as to their preferred path - Brechin City / Montrose Roselea as examples.

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Much has been made on various P&B threads about the imbalance between the  areas covered by the Highland and Lowland Leagues.

The idea of taking clubs out of the Highland zone and placing them into the Lowland zone only weakens the Highland zone further and increases the imbalance which posters flag up. Don't they see that?

There is an imbalance because of the geography and the geography doesn't change. However, the road transport infrastructure has changed in the Highland zone e.g. Aberdeen by-pass, and is continuing to change, with improvements to the Aberdeen to Inverness road. Travel times have and will continue to improve i.e. journey times will reduce further.

There is talk e.g. Brechin City not wishing to be part of the Highland zone. Don't they understand that, if they end up bottom of the SPFL2, in some time ahead, then they will be faced with a play-off and, if they lose it, they go down to Tier 5. If they were playing in the Highland League they would have a greatly enhanced chance of winning that league and being in the play-off for a return to SPFL2. If they went into the Lowland League they wouldn't find it that easy to even stay in that league - especially as more clubs are promoted from the EoS and WoS.

It has been claimed that Brechin City's current crop of players are from the Lowland zone area. That's fine. That's their choice. However, it doesn't seem to have been a good choice does it? Bottom of SPFL2 is not a good result.

There-again other clubs from the Highland zone also have players who are based in the Lowland zone e.g. Elgin City. Maybe they should head for the Lowland League if they are relegated whilst fielding a bunch of Lowland zone players? 

 

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2 hours ago, cmontheloknow said:

Teams swap between leagues down there.

In England football is dominated, at non-league levels, by clubs and leagues from the south and the midlands where the roads transport system is excellent. There is little difficulty getting to and from anywhere. People from such areas have no idea that elsewhere in England or, indeed, the rest of the UK the road system is much poorer and that makes it harder for clubs from other areas to travel the same distances which the south/midland clubs take for granted. That is why Gloucester City and Bishop's Stortford have been put into northern leagues with journeys right up into the north-east - which, of course, is a complete nonsense.

It is similar to the people and clubs from central Scotland who are used to getting around the Central Belt easily and cannot understand the difficulties faced by clubs from outside the Central Belt.

It's not the fault of the South/Midland English or the Central Belters in Scotland but many of them don't get it - and, in a sense, why should they care!

Edited by Dev
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2 hours ago, cmontheloknow said:

Teams swap between leagues down there.

I’m not suggesting we copy them, I’m just saying that the travel in the North section is considerably more than travelling from Dundee to Morayshire (using this area as an average to the whole area, although the majority of the games will be around Aberdeen)

Edited by Spyro
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What are the Lowland league voting about? Is it to move the line or abandon it completely in respect of clubs being relegated from the SPFL? Is there a vote to institute a boundary line for teams who want to be promoted to the LL?

Because again we have pages of debate about whether the Tayside clubs should be in the HL or LL catchment areas when no such areas exist for teams moving up to those leagues. There is no HL catchment area and no LL catchment area for clubs in tier 6, only those coming from tier 4.

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54 minutes ago, patriot1 said:

Because again we have pages of debate about whether the Tayside clubs should be in the HL or LL catchment areas when no such areas exist for teams moving up to those leagues. There is no HL catchment area and no LL catchment area for clubs in tier 6, only those coming from tier 4.

Which is a lovely way of screwing over the Lowland League. They're tied into promotion from above and below by 4 way agreements, soon to be be 5 way agreement below. They can no longer set their own boundaries. Other than when their was an advert for applications when they clearly did.

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4 hours ago, Dev said:

Much has been made on various P&B threads about the imbalance between the  areas covered by the Highland and Lowland Leagues.

The idea of taking clubs out of the Highland zone and placing them into the Lowland zone only weakens the Highland zone further and increases the imbalance which posters flag up. Don't they see that? ...

Angus, Dundee and Perthshire have never been in the Highland League zone in historical terms, so how does this weaken the Highland League? Cove Rangers' exploits this season and the quality of Brora Rangers in recent seasons demonstrate that the HL as is already provides a credible tier 5 feeder even if it could use getting trimmed back a bit in number to get rid of some of its deadwood.

The HL never talk about Tayside juniors as a tier six feeder only the NCL and north region, the SFA officeholders saw no problem with the east region being an LL feeder in PWG meetings, and according to George Fraser the SPFL were trying to strong arm the LL into a boundary shift in recent months to help out Brechin. The only people that seem to take this issue deadly seriously are posters on here.

The LL are probably angling for something in return (e.g. automatic relegation for Club 42) before agreeing to the shift. 

Edited by LongTimeLurker
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6 hours ago, cmontheloknow said:

Teams swap between leagues down there.

Which leads to crazy things like Bishops Stortford being in the National League North despite being in Hertfordshire (only about 30 miles north of central London).  There are problems in the English non-league pyramid with there being too many southern clubs high up and it the dividing lines drifting south over time.  The introduction of the National League North/South (or Conference North/South) as it used to be seems to have made the problems worse, if anything.

We're always going to have a problem if there are only two feeders to League Two and any option which ends up with the Highland League champions playing off against the Lowland League champions is not going to be very fair as there are so many people and teams in the south compared to the north.

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1 hour ago, LongTimeLurker said:

Angus, Dundee and Perthshire have never been in the Highland League zone in historical terms, so how does this weaken the Highland League? Cove Rangers' exploits this season and the quality of Brora Rangers in recent seasons demonstrate that the HL as is already provides a credible tier 5 feeder even if it could use getting trimmed back a bit in number to get rid of some of its deadwood.

The HL never talk about Tayside juniors as a tier six feeder only the NCL and north region, the SFA officeholders saw no problem with the east region being an LL feeder in PWG meetings, and according to George Fraser the SPFL were trying to strong arm the LL into a boundary shift in recent months to help out Brechin. The only people that seem to take this issue deadly seriously are posters on here.

The LL are probably angling for something in return (e.g. automatic relegation for Club 42) before agreeing to the shift. 

Can't talk to a league body that doesn't exist. The East Region have shown themselves to want to stick together on a certain level, especially as their overall preference is to enter under the Lowland League. Which has seen them outside the pyramid because the EoSFL won't accept the East Region into the Lowland League area, and Tayside clubs aren't talking to the Highland League.

As for the Highland League. There was no boundary prior to the pyramid. In the same way individual leagues never had boundaries. Since the pyramid came into being they've acknowledged and accepted the boundary set by the SPFL pyramid playoff.

Quote

The Highland League boundaries now include anywhere north of the Tay, so the likes of Broughty Athletic, Lochee United or Montrose Roselea could be tempted.

HFL President Finaly Noble May 2015.

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Suppose if you had N,S,E,W leagues all feeding into the spfl with the 4 champions going up, then maybe another league could be created somehow. But the spfl doesn't want to see 3 or 4 disappearing into non league,and they'd never vote for it - suggest things are ok for now with the HL/LL play off situation. England has a strong pyramid but that gets twisted over geography at times.

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On 13/05/2020 at 12:37, Pyramidic said:

 

The answer is clearly to have 4 leagues feeding the Lowland League:

- East of Scotland FL

- West of Scotland FL

- South of Scotland FL 

- Mid- Scotland FL

 

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.

 

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14 minutes ago, mcruic said:

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.

 

Before the East Region saw all the departures to the EoSFL, you had the following teams in the Super League: Lochee United (6th), Broughty Athletic (10th), Carnoustie Panmure (12th), Forfar West End (16th) then below that in the Premier League you had Tayport who finished 4th (20th overall). Since then Bonnyrigg Rose and looking good for Bo'ness United who would of been replaced in the East in normal years by Whitehill Welfare & Vale of Leithen. The EoS Premier is only getting weaker with clubs moving up and not yet being replaced by a similar standard. The same would be true of the WoSFL over the years. 

Its not a ton of depth, but there's a bit more than 2. Especially when you consider that Lochee United and Tayport were capable of winning multiple Super League titles over the years.

I don't believe in the 4 feeders to the Lowland League idea by the way.

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4 hours ago, FairWeatherFan said:

Before the East Region saw all the departures to the EoSFL, you had the following teams in the Super League: Lochee United (6th), Broughty Athletic (10th), Carnoustie Panmure (12th), Forfar West End (16th) then below that in the Premier League you had Tayport who finished 4th (20th overall). Since then Bonnyrigg Rose and looking good for Bo'ness United who would of been replaced in the East in normal years by Whitehill Welfare & Vale of Leithen. The EoS Premier is only getting weaker with clubs moving up and not yet being replaced by a similar standard. The same would be true of the WoSFL over the years. 

Its not a ton of depth, but there's a bit more than 2. Especially when you consider that Lochee United and Tayport were capable of winning multiple Super League titles over the years.

I don't believe in the 4 feeders to the Lowland League idea by the way.

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.

Edited by mcruic
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16 hours ago, stanley said:

...is not going to be very fair as there are so many people and teams in the south compared to the north.

The sparser population and much greater distance from Ibrox and Parkhead means you can get some reasonably supported and/or very well funded clubs in the HL catchment. As long as the quality stays comparable in the top 4 in each tier 5 feeder is there really an issue here that's worth losing sleep over, if there are more Royal Albert and Lochore Welfare type clubs in lower tiers that will never get anywhere near the Club 42 playoff?

If Banks o Dee are expected to travel to Wick and Fort William on tier 5 entry, a trip to Lochee or Carnoustie at some future point is reasonable enough in logistical terms for LL catchment clubs.

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19 minutes ago, LongTimeLurker said:

The sparser population and much greater distance from Ibrox and Parkhead means you can get some reasonably supported and/or very well funded clubs in the HL catchment. As long as the quality stays comparable in the top 4 in each tier 5 feeder is there really an issue here that's worth losing sleep over, if there are more Royal Albert and Lochore Welfare type clubs in lower tiers that will never get anywhere near the Club 42 playoff?

If Banks o Dee are expected to travel to Wick and Fort William on tier 5 entry, a trip to Lochee or Carnoustie at some future point is reasonable enough in logistical terms for LL catchment clubs.

According to go theaa.com

  • Lochee United to Wick Academy = 234.5 miles for 4hrs 34mins
  • Banks O'Dee to Wick Academy = 206.3 miles for 4hrs 34 mins
  • Carnoustie Panmure to Wick Academy = 247.3 miles for 4 hrs 56mins

 

  • Lochee United to Fort William = 123.6 miles for 2hrs 36mins
  • Banks O'Dee to Fort William = 169.5 miles for 3hrs 30mins
  • Carnoustie Panmure to Fort William = 136.3 miles for 2hrs 57mins

Maybe we should get Banks O'Dee into the Lowland League as well while we're at it.

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