Promotion / relegation

[Rab B Nesbit]

31 minutes ago, VodkaTap said:

I think you will find that the 'gentleman' in question has the reputation of being a wum who like a bit of fishing from time to time !!

Shocking ... I’d never do that VT ...  

[pipedreamer]

While only the EoS league wants proper promotion to the Lowland League does it really need an extra place for this season? Once the West comes on board you can have the champions going up automatically and a playoff between runners up for the 3rd promotion place. 

2 auto promotion places would mean champions of SoSL (who don’t want promoted) and EoSL (who do) going up. Unless you made it a 4 way playoff with EOS 1st v SOS 2nd and SOS 1st v SOS 2nd with winners going up, otherwise you may end up with the farce of the south league leaders chucking games to avoid automatic promotion.

[Burnie_man]

1 minute ago, pipedreamer said:

While only the EoS league wants proper promotion to the Lowland League does it really need an extra place for this season? Once the West comes on board you can have the champions going up automatically and a playoff between runners up for the 3rd promotion place. 

2 auto promotion places would mean champions of SoSL (who don’t want promoted) and EoSL (who do) going up. Unless you made it a 4 way playoff with EOS 1st v SOS 2nd and SOS 1st v SOS 2nd with winners going up, otherwise you may end up with the farce of the south league leaders chucking games to avoid automatic promotion.

Assuming all are Licenced, EoS Champion automatically promoted, loser of EoS Championship play-off faces SoS Champion.

[pipedreamer]

2 minutes ago, Burnie_man said:

Assuming all are Licenced, EoS Champion automatically promoted, loser of EoS Championship play-off faces SoS Champion.

That’s not how it works. Both leagues are Tier 6, so two promotion places would be equally distributed. The only way to make it fair is to have it like I stated, that way both leagues are treated the same and if all licensed then sos isn’t forced into a league they don’t want to be in and the eos teams have the oppertunity of promotion. When the West come on board they can be tier 6 with sos below and it can be West v east for 3rd promotion place with winners of each automatically promoted.

[Marten]

1 minute ago, pipedreamer said:

That’s not how it works. Both leagues are Tier 6, so two promotion places would be equally distributed. The only way to make it fair is to have it like I stated, that way both leagues are treated the same and if all licensed then sos isn’t forced into a league they don’t want to be in and the eos teams have the oppertunity of promotion. When the West come on board they can be tier 6 with sos below and it can be West v east for 3rd promotion place with winners of each automatically promoted.

Any changes to promotion will be the result of discussions between LL/EOS/SOS. It's not that unreasonable if EOS gets an automatic spot and the other one is being contested between the EOS runners up and SOS champion as the EOS represents a far larger area and (now) more than twice the amount of clubs. I wouldn't be shocked if the SOS agree to that.

In other countries it's not that rare for leagues at the same tier to have different promotion spots into the same league. In Germany, regional leagues have differing amounts of promotion and/or play-off spots to the higher tier, depending on the size of the region and amount of clubs they represent.

[Burnie_man]

Just now, pipedreamer said:

That’s not how it works. Both leagues are Tier 6, so two promotion places would be equally distributed. The only way to make it fair is to have it like I stated, that way both leagues are treated the same and if all licensed then sos isn’t forced into a league they don’t want to be in and the eos teams have the oppertunity of promotion. When the West come on board they can be tier 6 with sos below and it can be West v east for 3rd promotion place with winners of each automatically promoted.

The EoS and SoS are left to decide themselves the method of arriving at who fills the promotion spots. I'm told the methodology I outlined has been discussed at EoS meetings as an example of how it could work next season if the LL went to 2 rel/pro spots.

It's not simply a case of league winners being promoted and I don't think we'll ever see a scenario of the SoS winners filling one of the automatic LL promotion spots, there's a degree of pragmatism involved.

[Rab B Nesbit]

15 minutes ago, Burnie_man said:

The EoS and SoS are left to decide themselves the method of arriving at who fills the promotion spot. 

Fixed.  

[GordonS]

This "there aren't enough licensed clubs in EoS" is a bit of a red herring - those likely to fill the top spots are all licensed, in the process, or could easily become so. Besides, even in the event that a club finishing in a potential promotion position isn't licensed, it just means a space not being used, so it would make no difference.

I've seen the expression "open the floodgates" used. Seriously? Increasing from one to two relegation spots is opening the floodgates?

There are a couple of strong strategic reasons for opening up another spot. The first is that you're much more likely to be able to persuade Cowdenbeath, Clyde and the rest to accept automatic relegation to a league with Linlithgow, Bonnyrigg and Bo'ness in it. And second, if you want to persuade those big west clubs to come in under you at tier 6, not increasing the promotion spots will be an absolute gift to the SJFA dinosaurs who'll go round their member clubs saying "see, it'll take you decades to get up".

My own view is that the LL ought to have 2 relegation spots this year, and say that they'll increase it to 3 if the WoS come onboard. There's no point in denying the reality of what's just happened beneath them. I wouldn't be outraged if they didn't, it's their game and we're the new guys, but I'd be disappointed.

[Rab B Nesbit]

1 minute ago, GordonS said:

This "there aren't enough licensed clubs in EoS" is a bit of a red herring - those likely to fill the top spots are all licensed, in the process, or could easily become so. Besides, even in the event that a club finishing in a potential promotion position isn't licensed, it just means a space not being used, so it would make no difference.

I've seen the expression "open the floodgates" used. Seriously? Increasing from one to two relegation spots is opening the floodgates?

There are a couple of strong strategic reasons for opening up another spot. The first is that you're much more likely to be able to persuade Cowdenbeath, Clyde and the rest to accept automatic relegation to a league with Linlithgow, Bonnyrigg and Bo'ness in it. And second, if you want to persuade those big west clubs to come in under you at tier 6, not increasing the promotion spots will be an absolute gift to the SJFA dinosaurs who'll go round their member clubs saying "see, it'll take you decades to get up".

My own view is that the LL ought to have 2 relegation spots this year, and say that they'll increase it to 3 if the WoS come onboard. There's no point in denying the reality of what's just happened beneath them. I wouldn't be outraged if they didn't, it's their game and we're the new guys, but I'd be disappointed.

That’s a good point. I was at Shettleston for the cup final last night and by the sounds of some of the chat there is still quite a bit of persuading to be done there. 

I defintely don’t think there is any case of denying what has gone on below. It’s great news and the LL clubs will very much want to move to full ventilation eventually. 

[FairWeatherFan]

The Lowland League, SoS and EoS have all had their AGMs this year. All the EoS talk coming away from theirs was for the one promotion spot through the EoS/SoS champion playoff. While Lowland is now busy hyping their fixture list release date of 25th June.

Is anyone really expecting the leagues to agree to a change in the tier 5/6 promotion and relegation format in the next 10 days, or during the season?

 

[VodkaTap]

12 minutes ago, FairWeatherFan said:

The Lowland League, SoS and EoS have all had their AGMs this year. All the EoS talk coming away from theirs was for the one promotion spot through the EoS/SoS champion playoff. While Lowland is now busy hyping their fixture list release date of 25th June.

Is anyone really expecting the leagues to agree to a change in the tier 5/6 promotion and relegation format in the next 10 days, or during the season?

 

Why the fixation about the next 10 days ?

Why would it be so outlandish for the 3 leagues to agree a change during the season ?

Lets be honest - it wouldn't make a scrap of difference when a decision like that was made.

Most teams will be going flat out to win their conference, or be in the top 5 at least !

[VodkaTap]

2 hours ago, Rab B Nesbit said:

Shocking ... I’d never do that VT ...  

Sorry Rab - but you have previous !!!   

[FairWeatherFan]

10 minutes ago, VodkaTap said:

Why the fixation about the next 10 days ?

Why would it be so outlandish for the 3 leagues to agree a change during the season ?

Lets be honest - it wouldn't make a scrap of difference when a decision like that was made.

Most teams will be going flat out to win their conference, or be in the top 5 at least !

Typically because a fixture list is the sign that you're set for the season and people like to know what they're playing for going into it. You don't usually see clubs voting to pull the rug out from under themselves once it's begun.

[VodkaTap]

19 minutes ago, FairWeatherFan said:

Typically because a fixture list is the sign that you're set for the season and people like to know what they're playing for going into it. You don't usually see clubs voting to pull the rug out from under themselves once it's begun.

But you have to remember that the LL has always worked with this uncertainty as to how many will be relegated !!

This uncertainty will always be there until  promotion / relegation to SPFL2 is resolved.  

[Marten]

It's only last week that the EOS AGM was held, all clubs were officially admitted & the structure has been decided. If there are any changes to promotion/relegation, it couldn't have been before than anyway. We don't know what's going on behind the scenes, but possible talks will likely only have started after the EOS AGM.

[bendan]

11 minutes ago, VodkaTap said:

But you have to remember that the LL has always worked with this uncertainty as to how many will be relegated !!

This uncertainty will always be there until  promotion / relegation to SPFL2 is resolved.  

The uncertainty would still be there, as it would depend on where the relegated club was going to go - LL or HL.

I'd have two automatic places (one for WoS and one for EoS) and one (WoS2 v EoS2 play-off) depending on what happens at the bottom of the SPFL. That way the LL teams would know which places (bottom 3) would be relegated.

[VodkaTap]

2 minutes ago, bendan said:

The uncertainty would still be there, as it would depend on where the relegated club was going to go - LL or HL.

I'd have two automatic places (one for WoS and one for EoS) and one (WoS2 v EoS2 play-off) depending on what happens at the bottom of the SPFL. That way the LL teams would know which places (bottom 3) would be relegated.

So you have decided that current tier 6 SoS champion cannot be promoted then ??

Also - in this scenario we might have bottom 4 being relegated.

[FairWeatherFan]

53 minutes ago, VodkaTap said:

But you have to remember that the LL has always worked with this uncertainty as to how many will be relegated !!

This uncertainty will always be there until  promotion / relegation to SPFL2 is resolved.  

I don't think it's impossible. I'm just following the lead of the EoS in this, they've been fairly open and transparent all the way through this.

The list of pros & cons about membership to the league compared to the SJFA has been around long before the flood of new members. On that list it had "Very likely more promotion places will be available to enter the Lowland League from Tier 6". So it's been something they've been working on for months. Yet they've came away from their AGM still saying that the promotion playoff is still going to be licenced EoS champion vs. licenced SoS champion.

I think the original intention months ago was for more promotion spots in 2018/19. But nobody saw the increase of EoS membership (particularly the quality of it), as well as the traction of the WoS feeder idea. That's maybe put things on the backburner for the year so they can sort everything out.

[ShrimpLok]

1 hour ago, VodkaTap said:

So you have decided that current tier 6 SoS champion cannot be promoted then ??

Also - in this scenario we might have bottom 4 being relegated.

I think what Bendan is suggesting is that the 2nd WoS vs 2nd EoS playoff winner would only be promoted in years when there wasn’t a HFL team promoted and SPFL2 LL based team demoted. 

This would give certainty that there would always be max 3 LL relegation spots and transfer the uncertainty to the 2nd place EoS and WoS teams. 

[bendan]

2 hours ago, VodkaTap said:

So you have decided that current tier 6 SoS champion cannot be promoted then ??

Also - in this scenario we might have bottom 4 being relegated.

I would be astonished if the SoS can remain at tier 6, unless it absorbs the West clubs. It only actually covers south west Scotland, rather than the south of Scotland, as the south east of Scotland is covered by the EoS, so it's already part of the area that must be covered by any WoS league.

I'd fix the relegation spots at 3. If the LL gets a relegated team from the SPFL but doesn't promote anyone, then only the two respective champions would get promoted.