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Junior football, what is the future?


Burnie_man

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7 minutes ago, GordonS said:

Also important to say that it's no longer a choice between going senior and the status quo. A WOSL will happen next season and clubs are going to leave the West Juniors for it. The status quo isn't going to exist much longer.

The battle is over, the rebels have won.

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10 minutes ago, Tutankhamen said:

The battle is over, the rebels have won.

The WR as a whole voted overwhelmingly to join the pyramid - aren't the rebels the ones who tried to prevent that from happening? Only a couple of years later when it became clear that the SJFA leadership weren't going to deliver did several clubs decide to take the decision for themselves. Who knows what happens next, but one way or another, a change is gonna come.

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5 minutes ago, GordonS said:

The WR as a whole voted overwhelmingly to join the pyramid - aren't the rebels the ones who tried to prevent that from happening? Only a couple of years later when it became clear that the SJFA leadership weren't going to deliver did several clubs decide to take the decision for themselves. Who knows what happens next, but one way or another, a change is gonna come.

I'll take a guess that what clubs are left in the East and West Junior Leagues amalgamate into one Region.

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4 hours ago, GordonS said:

The WR as a whole voted overwhelmingly to join the pyramid - aren't the rebels the ones who tried to prevent that from happening? Only a couple of years later when it became clear that the SJFA leadership weren't going to deliver did several clubs decide to take the decision for themselves. Who knows what happens next, but one way or another, a change is gonna come.

Is it not the SFA that have not delivered??

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7 hours ago, GordonS said:

Agreed and I'll be honest, L2 holds less appeal to me than the LL. Not that it matters to Linlithgow Rose for now, but ten years ago we would have been good enough to win a tier 5 league and hopefully we will be again. There's a bit more travel, prices are near-enough double (which IMO is way too much for part-time football) and you play each other 4 times a season.

If i wanted to support a league club, I would be supporting a league club.

Prices are really important here. £20 might be decent value for Championship football, but it's more than I'm prepared to pay to watch football most Saturday afternoons. If my club charged that I'd only go to the big games and the rest of the time I'd go and watch teams that charge less. But - and it's the critical point - clubs can charge as little as they want. If a club wants to charge less and pay players less than other teams in its league, it'll soon find itself relegated and playing at the appropriate level. And that's fine.

It's not an argument to hide in a wee bubble. 

 

Probably not one league lower down - it'll likely be two. The EOS took everyone in at tier 6, but anyone applying for next season will probably come in at tier 8. For most that'll be fine, it's pretty much their level but for the likes of Bathgate it'll be lower than where they could have been.

Clubs in the west should be wary of missing the bus - if enough make the switch this season then those who wait a year could easily come in 3 leagues lower.

 

Kilwinning who got knocked out of the Junior Cup by Bridge of Don? Who got humped 3-0 two seasons ago  by a Bo'ness side that finished 8th in the East Superleague?

Yeah, they don't get to hang on Talbot's coat-tails.

 

Who was hanging on who’s coat tails in the 90s? teams have there moments.

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8 hours ago, GordonS said:

If i wanted to support a league club, I would be supporting a league club.

 

Apologies if I'm confusing you with another on here but did you not say you only started following Junior football in the last ten year or so because you enjoyed the cheaper price/less travel/stand where you want, etc?

If your club did advance through the leagues do you think that you'd start lower down again? Find another local non-league side to follow? (not a dig. Just idle curiosity)

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Just now, Sancho Panza said:

Just can't get my head round the fact that the SFA appear to be blameless in this fiasco.

The SFA don't run leagues.  They were arbiters between the SJFA and the pyramid leagues, they have no power to impose anything. They walked away when it was clear there was never going to be an agreement.

The SFA have told the SJFA that they are on their own, I believe feedback was also given to them that the "all-in" approach and failure to bring individual Regions around the table was the main reason for failure.

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Just can't get my head round the fact that the SFA appear to be blameless in this fiasco.


IMO they aren’t but they only facilitated the PWG meetings but they should have been harder with the parties to make this work as the governing body. Also didn’t help that they didn’t seem to know what the issues were until quite a way into the process.

Other have a different opinion than me on this but I believe they have to share some blame but most lies at the feet of others.
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Could somebody please clarify something for me ?

Was there anything in the vote by the SJFA clubs that stated that the it was an "all in or none in" situation, or could the SJFA have approached this issue region by region from the start ? I genuinely don't know the answer to that, hopefully somebody does.

Edited by glensmad
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3 minutes ago, glensmad said:

Could somebody please clarify something for me ?

Was there anything in the vote by the SJFA clubs that stated that the it was an "all in or none in" situation, or could the SJFA have approached this issue region by region from the start ? I genuinely don't know the answer to that, hopefully somebody does.

The "all-in mandate" was given to TAJ back in 2002 when the Pyramid group first met, ie he was given the go ahead by SJFA members to be part of discussions but it had to leave the SJFA fully intact in it's own structure, ie on their own terms.   He re-iterated that at AGM's of 2008 and 2009 and stated that if clubs wanted a different approach he would need to be instructed accordingly, they didn't.  That continued to be the stance in 2011/2012 when the LL was being discussed and as far as I am aware that "mandate" hasn't ever been changed, it's all-in or none in.

Hence why I keep saying that if that approach was to be changed, it had to be at AGM (or EGM), he can't just arbitrarily decide that it doesn't apply anymore and negotiate West entry and leave everyone else behind, although it's too  late anyway so it doesn't really matter.

 

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So the all in mandate was in 2002!!!! The mandate is the same age as Billie Eilish 😲

Blimey. 18 years later and they are still working to that - no wonder the game is a bogey at lower levels if not one administrator at a national or regional level or indeed a club thought to challenge that stance over time, especially if it was brought up again in 2008 and 2009.

Common sense would have been to look at changing this once Kelty set the hares running.

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39 minutes ago, Sancho Panza said:

Just can't get my head round the fact that the SFA appear to be blameless in this fiasco.

They're blameless by being useless in the matter. They've never been able to dictate what happens, because at the end of the day they are the clubs already in the pyramid.

When people try to say that the SFA can force change it usually devolves to the threat of pulling referees. Which is never going to happen.

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18 minutes ago, Burnie_man said:

The "all-in mandate" was given to TAJ back in 2002 when the Pyramid group first met, ie he was given the go ahead by SJFA members to be part of discussions but it had to leave the SJFA fully intact in it's own structure, ie on their own terms.   He re-iterated that at AGM's of 2008 and 2009 and stated that if clubs wanted a different approach he would need to be instructed accordingly, they didn't.  That continued to be the stance in 2011/2012 when the LL was being discussed and as far as I am aware that "mandate" hasn't ever been changed, it's all-in or none in.

Hence why I keep saying that if that approach was to be changed, it had to be at AGM (or EGM), he can't just arbitrarily decide that it doesn't apply anymore and negotiate West entry and leave everyone else behind, although it's too  late anyway so it doesn't really matter.

 

If the "all in or none in" instruction from the clubs to TJ has never been formally changed, then that explains his approach to the negotiations. Thank you for that clarification.

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20 minutes ago, Burnie_man said:

The "all-in mandate" was given to TAJ back in 2002 when the Pyramid group first met, ie he was given the go ahead by SJFA members to be part of discussions but it had to leave the SJFA fully intact in it's own structure, ie on their own terms.   He re-iterated that at AGM's of 2008 and 2009 and stated that if clubs wanted a different approach he would need to be instructed accordingly, they didn't.  That continued to be the stance in 2011/2012 when the LL was being discussed and as far as I am aware that "mandate" hasn't ever been changed, it's all-in or none in.

Hence why I keep saying that if that approach was to be changed, it had to be at AGM (or EGM), he can't just arbitrarily decide that it doesn't apply anymore and negotiate West entry and leave everyone else behind, although it's too  late anyway so it doesn't really matter.

What muddied the waters on here was people claiming that the NRSJFA had brought the all in mandate to an end after a meeting between the SFA, HL and NRSJFA went nowhere last season in terms of negotiating promotion and relegation.  Option Z was clearly still very much a case of all three in at the same time, so that was not the case. As things stand now the HL, NRSJFA and North Caledonian league seem to still be negotiating a future north pyramid even after things collapsed in the south. Presumably that means the NRSJFA are contemplating a breakaway from the SJFA at this point.

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Just now, glensmad said:

If the "all in or none in" instruction from the clubs to TJ has never been formally changed, then that explains his approach to the negotiations. Thank you for that clarification.

Although TJ hasn't fully respected that mandate, as he tried to get both the east & the west in, but "forgot" about the north. The north who, ironically, might end up as the only region joining the pyramid intact if the currently ongoing talks go as expected.

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8 minutes ago, glensmad said:

If the "all in or none in" instruction from the clubs to TJ has never been formally changed, then that explains his approach to the negotiations. Thank you for that clarification.

I get the impression he used the mandate as and when it suited him.  However, the clubs themselves never made it clear that they would be happy for Regions to negotiate their own entry as and when required, however you could also argue that is a symptom of years and years of lapping up what they were told rather than actually start to ask some hard questions regarding the future.  Far too many unquestionably trusted the top table, hence why some SJFA AGM's barely lasted 30 minutes.

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