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The Last Expansion...


FairWeatherFan

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5 hours ago, Hampden Diehard said:

I sometimes laugh at some of the stuff proposed by fans of a Scotland-wide pyramid. Montrose Roselea joining the Highland League for example.

Montrose Roselea isn't the best example as the actively chose on their own accord to move from the SJFA East Region and enter the SJFA North Region. Their first season in the North Region saw them enter the First Division (West) and regularly compete in towns that have Highland League representatives.

 

5 hours ago, Hampden Diehard said:

Ditto pushing teams from the Dundee area with hee-haw support into playing teams from north of Inverness.

Most suggestions I see for Tier 6 under the Highland League is for the North Caledonian League, North Super League and a Tayside Super League. Those leagues basically exist already apart from the Tayside Super League, although their are proposals in the East Region for a 18 team Super League North or a 10 team Super League North with a Premier League North below. So they are some that are open to playing in a purely Tayside league.

The only trips North of Inverness would be if a Dundee club is promoted to the Highland League that still has both Brora Rangers and Wick Academy. That's 2/34 league games. The SJFA Scottish Cup can do far worse.

5 hours ago, Hampden Diehard said:

And people want to extend this to force what are essentially pub teams into a national league with travelling issues way beyond their means to overcome?

The only national leagues in Scotland are the four divisions of the SPFL. Nobody is suggesting creating extra national leagues, except for the SPFL of course.

 

5 hours ago, Hampden Diehard said:

How would the LL be of benefit to the likes of Auchinleck

One of the reasons that East Region clubs moved to the EoS and into the pyramid was because they were losing players to the Lowland League. You can probably look at the squad lists for the likes of BSC Glasgow, East Kilbride and others that would otherwise be playing West Region junior football. So there's that. Then you look at how East Kilbride FC and Cumbernauld Colts are arguably bigger sides now than East Kilbride Thistle and Cumbernauld United. The West Region outside the pyramid would allow for them to be overtaken by others.

The Lowland League will also evolve to being the SuperDuperLeague that TJ dreamed of, with the odd former EoS/SPFL club thrown in.

5 hours ago, Hampden Diehard said:

and who benefits from Roselea trekking to Halkirk to play in front of two men and a sheep?

Nobody is putting those two clubs in the same league unless they are good enough for Highland League football. So if it happens it's to the benefit of the towns of Montrose and Halkirk for having sides good enough to rise that high.

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5 hours ago, Hampden Diehard said:

I sometimes laugh at some of the stuff proposed by fans of a Scotland-wide pyramid. Montrose Roselea joining the Highland League for example. Ditto pushing teams from the Dundee area with hee-haw support into playing teams from north of Inverness. For some theoretical exercise? In the Lowland League, we currently have teams without a home ground and less spectators than the two teams and their touchline retinue in attendance. And people want to extend this to force what are essentially pub teams into a national league with travelling issues way beyond their means to overcome?

Whilst I appreciate that this is a thread on the HL, consider first whether the West juniors have got it right to resist the globalisation agenda? How would the LL be of benefit to the likes of Auchinleck, and who benefits from Roselea trekking to Halkirk to play in front of two men and a sheep?

Well, where else would Montrose Roselea go apart from the HL if they wanted to move up to tier 5? :unsure: They moved to the North Juniors due to travel, so telling them to play in the LL would be a bit stupid.

Remember, had Montrose of League Two lost their play-off with Brora they'd be in the Highland League in 2015-16. Any talk of Montrose Roselea joining the Highland League has been in relation to them now using Links Park so the ground aspect of their club licence is taken care of.

Any league at tier 6 below the Highland League should be regionalised north/south (just like it is below the LL with east/west) so Roselea wouldn't be going to Halkirk unless both miraculously gained promotion to the HL.  And if a team from Dundee got licensed and promoted to the HL then they'd be going north of Inverness twice a season. But Dundee to Inverness is the same as going to Gretna, so the LL isn't great either.

As for the West Juniors and Auchinleck, they are not resisting the agenda, because they voted overwhelmingly for the SJFA to join the pyramid last summer! Joining the pyramid allows them to get a club licence, and promotion to the LL is a benefit because they would play at a higher level

I see @FairWeatherFan has covered everything as well :)

Edited by Ginaro
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10 hours ago, Hampden Diehard said:

I sometimes laugh at some of the stuff proposed by fans of a Scotland-wide pyramid. Montrose Roselea joining the Highland League for example. Ditto pushing teams from the Dundee area with hee-haw support into playing teams from north of Inverness. For some theoretical exercise? In the Lowland League, we currently have teams without a home ground and less spectators than the two teams and their touchline retinue in attendance. And people want to extend this to force what are essentially pub teams into a national league with travelling issues way beyond their means to overcome?

 

Whilst I appreciate that this is a thread on the HL, consider first whether the West juniors have got it right to resist the globalisation agenda? How would the LL be of benefit to the likes of Auchinleck, and who benefits from Roselea trekking to Halkirk to play in front of two men and a sheep?

 

 

 

 

 

 

The same West Juniors who have agreed to join the pyramid this summer subject to confirmation from all other relevant parties?

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15 hours ago, welshbairn said:

I think the pyramid obsessives mainly have office jobs with a tad of OCD. A pretty pattern doesn't necessarily  make for better football.

I can't help feeling there's a lot of truth in what you say there.  Really we should start with a clear objective of what we are trying to achieve or improve then consider what structure provides that.

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1 hour ago, Northboy said:

I can't help feeling there's a lot of truth in what you say there.  Really we should start with a clear objective of what we are trying to achieve or improve then consider what structure provides that.

At least it's not as bad as the FA at the minute that have actually talked about the Perfect Pyramid.

They seem to be trying for 1-2-4-8-16 down to a certain level.

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14 minutes ago, FairWeatherFan said:

At least it's not as bad as the FA at the minute that have actually talked about the Perfect Pyramid.

They seem to be trying for 1-2-4-8-16 down to a certain level.

I think there needs to be a system where clubs can rise and fall across the whole country, without being segregated into separate grades. It needs to be a one that takes into account geography, population and numbers of clubs. Club density North v South is completely different. We don't really have a nice even way to divide up the country into nice even regions. Even North/West/East as the junior regions go isn't equitable really. I've said before I think you need a system that allows for a deeper pyramid in the Lowland area and a shallower one in the Highlands - but doesn't make it 'harder' for a Lowland club to gain promotion. Pragmatically, this means different numbers of promotion slots depending on a club's location.

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The Pyramid should be HL, LL(East) LL(West). Division 3/League whateveritis should be upped to 16 clubs.

16th in Div 3 is relegated. Champs of HL, LL(E), LL(W) and 15th play round robin tourney and 1st & 2nd in mini-league are promoted.

Below that the EoSL, SoSL, North, East & West Juniors attached to the appropriate tier 5 league

Easy peasy lemon fucking squezy

 

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6 hours ago, EdTheDuck said:

The Pyramid should be HL, LL(East) LL(West). Division 3/League whateveritis should be upped to 16 clubs.

16th in Div 3 is relegated. Champs of HL, LL(E), LL(W) and 15th play round robin tourney and 1st & 2nd in mini-league are promoted.

Below that the EoSL, SoSL, North, East & West Juniors attached to the appropriate tier 5 league

Easy peasy lemon fucking squezy

 

Why bother keeping east juniors while EOSFL is in existence though? 

Edited by JamesGroundHopping
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23 hours ago, EdTheDuck said:

The Pyramid should be HL, LL(East) LL(West). Division 3/League whateveritis should be upped to 16 clubs.

16th in Div 3 is relegated. Champs of HL, LL(E), LL(W) and 15th play round robin tourney and 1st & 2nd in mini-league are promoted.

Below that the EoSL, SoSL, North, East & West Juniors attached to the appropriate tier 5 league

Easy peasy lemon fucking squezy

 

Everyone has their own ideal pyramid but they generally don't reflect what clubs want.

Do L3 clubs want to lose 6 matches a season and play in a 16 team league?

Do the current LL members want to split into east and west? I very much doubt it.

Why would you have two leagues covering the same area at the same tier, especially when one has taken all the best clubs from the other?

How could you have the East Juniors under the LL when they straddle the HL/LL boundary?

Difficult, difficult, lemon difficult.

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On 28/02/2019 at 13:02, Highland Capital said:

Surely one of the obvious teams that would be talked about to join the league would be Golspie Sutherland, but is it not the floodlights that stop them?

with more teams in the league it could realistically split in 2 reducing the number of fixtures.if this were the case would floodlights even be necessary?

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I don’t know if Division 3/League 2 clubs want to play in a 16 and lose 6 games a season or not. Ask them. My thinking behind it was pandering to their well-known protectionism. If not then 10th goes down and 9th joins the play-out.

Whether the current LL clubs want to split East & West is irrelevant. Let them stick to their current basis if they want and make up the LL (West) entirely with West Juniors. The population split means that it is a nonsense for the HL to be on an equal footing with the LL. That has to be addressed and the way to do that is with East-West leagues in the South.

If the East Juniors in Angus, Dundee & Perth want to play in (or below the) the HL, fine. If they’d prefer the LL that’s fine too. Ask them.

The boundary is arbitrary, man-made. It can be changed to suit the clubs preferences. For example, how are Montrose Roselea enjoying life in the North Juniors? Happy with their lot or regretting it? They’d be a reasonable test case, wouldn’t they?

These problems can be fixed easily with a little flexibility and a bit of leadership. The HL & North Juniors are sitting like lumpen deadweight, offering nothing to address the possibility for the NJ’s to slot in below the HL.

The SPFL should be leading this, but of course, leadership is an alien concept to them too.  For example, to create a situation where NJ grounds can be acceptable at Tier 6/7 but not tier 5 so that genuinely ambitious clubs (like Banks o Dee, Dyce, Montrose) can start fixing their grounds to meet HL criteria but others can work away in tier 6/7 without having to buy floodlights. That isn’t beyond the ken of mankind is it?

 

 

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Perhaps the biggest nonsense in all of that is being fine with two leagues covering the same geographical area (East Juniors and EoS), with the added bonus of having Tayside clubs feeding into the Lowland League.  That is the biggest sticking point in progressing the pyramid, and the sad thing is Maxwell seems to be “fine” with it as well which just betrays his lack of knowledge on the subject.

As you rightly pointed out, the HL shouldn’t really have the same access to the SPFL as the LL given weight of numbers as and when West come on board, so why add to is by lumping in Tayside Juniors into the LL area? The fact is, Tayside should have been amalgamated with North way back in 2002 when the Junior regions were re-vamped. The SJFA pandered to them, this time round the SFA shouldn’t.

You'll be waiting a long time if you're waiting for leadership from Maxwell.

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I wonder if in hindsight, instead of having the Highland and Lowland Leagues, it'd made more sense splitting into four.  For example a 'Highland' League which would be the Highlands and Moray (Forres Mechanics, Nairn, Brora, Clach, FW etc), a North East League (Cove, Fraserburgh, Formartine, Lochee United, the junior Angus clubs etc.), a South East League (Spartans, Kelty Hearts, Bo'Ness (?), Linlithgow Rose etc.) and a South West League (Dalbeatie Star, Pollok, Cumbernauld, Auckinleck Talbot etc.).  Now granted, some might have to jimmy back and forth from time to time as they do down south, but I wonder if some clubs would be more open to joining the pyramid if the leagues were a bit more regional.

Edited by Highland Capital
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1 hour ago, EdTheDuck said:

Whether the current LL clubs want to split East & West is irrelevant. Let them stick to their current basis if they want and make up the LL (West) entirely with West Juniors. The population split means that it is a nonsense for the HL to be on an equal footing with the LL. That has to be addressed and the way to do that is with East-West leagues in the South.

The boundary is arbitrary, man-made. It can be changed to suit the clubs preferences. For example, how are Montrose Roselea enjoying life in the North Juniors? Happy with their lot or regretting it? They’d be a reasonable test case, wouldn’t they?

The SPFL should be leading this, but of course, leadership is an alien concept to them too.  For example, to create a situation where NJ grounds can be acceptable at Tier 6/7 but not tier 5 so that genuinely ambitious clubs (like Banks o Dee, Dyce, Montrose) can start fixing their grounds to meet HL criteria but others can work away in tier 6/7 without having to buy floodlights. That isn’t beyond the ken of mankind is it?

You can't split the LL into East/West until you have enough licensed teams to form each league, and you'd also need to adjust the play-offs.

Banks O'Dee and Montrose Roselea already have grounds which meet HL criteria...

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On 3/4/2019 at 20:31, The clean living guy said:

Is there any teams in Pitlochry? Seems like a town that could support a side. Also talk of a team from Aberfeldy joining the juniors? 

The population of Pitlochry is somewhere around 2,000 as I recall, so theoretically could do it (Brora is about the same) and given it's location it could have population centres to pick up players from and as it's on the A9 it's not too difficult for everyone to get to.  In fact, you could even argue it has more going for it location-wise than the likes of Fort William.  

If you look at that area as well, the population would be there for 'Perthshire United'.  Pitlochry, Dunkeld, Birnam, Crieff, Aberfeldy, Blair Atholl etc. aren't *that* small.  I'd imagine if there was going to be a team there, there'd be one already (or at least Vale of Atholl would've continued competing at a higher level).  It'll not happen now unless some sugar daddy comes in or someone moves there.  Perhaps that's something for Edusport to look at!

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50 minutes ago, Highland Capital said:

The population of Pitlochry is somewhere around 2,000 as I recall, so theoretically could do it (Brora is about the same) and given it's location it could have population centres to pick up players from and as it's on the A9 it's not too difficult for everyone to get to.  In fact, you could even argue it has more going for it location-wise than the likes of Fort William.  

If you look at that area as well, the population would be there for 'Perthshire United'.  Pitlochry, Dunkeld, Birnam, Crieff, Aberfeldy, Blair Atholl etc. aren't *that* small.  I'd imagine if there was going to be a team there, there'd be one already (or at least Vale of Atholl would've continued competing at a higher level).  It'll not happen now unless some sugar daddy comes in or someone moves there.  Perhaps that's something for Edusport to look at!

I had thought the population would have been bigger. It would really need to be a team to represent the larger area then I guess. With regards Edusport I thought Fort William would have been an idea for their plan. 

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The big Polish lads working in the hotels, bars  and building trade will all be fucking off home, as will the pickers. Pitlochry will be left with a few peely wallies who peeled the tatties. 

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  • 1 month later...
On 05/03/2019 at 12:48, Hampden Diehard said:

I sometimes laugh at some of the stuff proposed by fans of a Scotland-wide pyramid. Montrose Roselea joining the Highland League for example. Ditto pushing teams from the Dundee area with hee-haw support into playing teams from north of Inverness. For some theoretical exercise? In the Lowland League, we currently have teams without a home ground and less spectators than the two teams and their touchline retinue in attendance. And people want to extend this to force what are essentially pub teams into a national league with travelling issues way beyond their means to overcome?

 

Whilst I appreciate that this is a thread on the HL, consider first whether the West juniors have got it right to resist the globalisation agenda? How would the LL be of benefit to the likes of Auchinleck, and who benefits from Roselea trekking to Halkirk to play in front of two men and a sheep?

 

You are correct. There is no chance of  junior clubs from Dundee or Aberdeen joining (or linking with) the North Caledonian League.  The Highlands & Islands form an entirely different region of Scotland, and it would be financially  impossible, for the majority of junior and NCL clubs alike .

However, if the North or Dundee/Angus ever decide to join a northern pyramid (currently unlikely), then the NCL may well decide to become a Highland Region "feeder" league. There have already been some tentative discussions with the HFL, but not as far as I am aware, with the junior Tayside clubs. 

The question for the north juniors and the NCL 'seniors' is:  would clubs be forced to take promotion ?  Just like smaller clubs in the EoS and SoS Leagues, the answer is NO, unless you have the required SFA club licence, and floodlights. So why bother ? 

There are a couple of NCL clubs which have shown some modest ambition (as mentioned above) in the past. Of greater relevance however would be the need to establish the NCL, as a 'safety net' for any future relegated HFL club, to provide a feeder league in the geographical area which best suits them,  with automatic promotion rights back to the HFL.

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https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/sport/football/highland-league/1744053/we-cant-offer-spots-in-the-highland-league-says-secretary-rod-houston/

Quote

Highland League secretary Rod Houston has told junior club Banks o’Dee the league does not have the power to offer any club a place in the Highland League.

Dee chairman Brian Winton told the Press and Journal his club is not expecting an invite to join should champions Cove beat Berwick Rangers in the play-off and reach League 2 but Houston believes Winton and the other junior clubs have already voted against becoming part of a pyramid structure below the Highland League.

Houston said: “There is the suggestion that the formation of a pyramid system in the North of Scotland is in the gift of the Highland League and it is blocked because the Highland League has not voted for it.

“The fact of the matter is that the pyramid system is an all-Scotland arrangement governed by the Scottish FA. There is a working group, on which the Highland League is represented, that meets regularly in Glasgow to monitor the working of the pyramid and consider possible routes for development.

“One such route was to consider the introduction of a pyramid tier below the Highland League in the North of Scotland with the North Region Junior Superleague housing what would have been called Tier 6.

“Part of that process was for representatives of the Highland League to meet with representatives of the North Region Junior FA to consider the possibility. That meeting took place in Huntly on November 18, last year and in the course of a cordial discussion, the NRJFA officials made it crystal clear that there was no appetite amongst junior clubs to become Tier 6 in the north, as indeed was their right so to do.”

Houston also clarified any club wishing to join the Highland League is welcome to make an application.

He said: “Given the speculation surrounding the possible promotion of Cove Rangers to the SPFL, it is worth noting that the Highland League’s officers have looked at possibilities if that occurs.

“However, not least out of respect for clubs involved in the play-offs, nothing will be made public at this stage with one exception.

“The normal process of seeking membership of the Highland League is to apply and the league would then determine the composition of its membership.”

EDIT: And I found the Article where Banks O'dee were talking about not expecting an invitation

https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/sport/football/1743679/banks-odee-not-looking-to-join-highland-league-says-president-brian-winton/

Quote

Banks o’ Dee are not making any preparations to join the Highland League next season, according to chairman Brian Winton.

The Aberdeen junior club has been touted as a possible replacement should Cove Rangers defeat Berwick Rangers in the SPFL pyramid play-off final.

But Winton says the Spain Park club is not expecting an invitation to join the Highland League should Cove earn promotion to Scottish League 2.

It has been another great season for the Aberdeen junior club, with Dee winning the Superleague title and the Aberdeenshire Cup.

But Winton said: “Irrespective of my views on this subject, the facts are that there is no pyramid into the Highland League at this moment in time.

“In financial and operational planning, making the step from junior football to the Highland League can’t be made at the end of a season if a team goes up or down.

“That can only happen if you start off with that objective at the beginning of the year.

“If Cove Rangers don’t go up this season then there’s no vacancy to fill so it would need the teams in the Highland League to vote to form a pyramid system before that can become an objective for Banks o’ Dee.

“You can’t make preparations overnight and financial and operational planning for the junior league and the Highland League are completely different. In addition, I have players signed on junior contracts so it doesn’t become a feasible option unless you know that there is a pyramid in place and you set up your whole operational background to do that. You can’t just wait until the end of May to see if there is a gap.

“No other league apart from the Highland League is part of a pyramid system without automatic promotion and relegation.”

Banks o’ Dee applied to join the Highland League a decade ago but the league opted to allow in Strathspey Thistle, Formartine United and Turriff United.

Winton added: “We also have to bear in mind that in season 2008-2009, before my time at the club, Banks o’ Dee put a considerable investment into the operational and financial planning to get into the Highland League and they were rejected by the members.

“So why would we go and put together a financial and business plan when there’s no clear pathway into that league? The Highland League are in the same position as they don’t have a clear pathway into the Scottish League until the bottom team in League 2 gets relegated.”

 

Edited by FairWeatherFan
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