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East Region Juniors


ballermk

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What is it with Scottish football and these ridiculous league splits? Now the East Region North has a proposal to split the 17-team league into two after 16 games and have two leagues of 8 and 9. Then teams would play each other home and away giving a total of 30 or 32 games depending on which half of the league you fall. What's wrong with just playing each other twice, once home, once away, giving a total of 32 games?

The first 16 games of the proposal would skew the table, with some teams perhaps getting an easier home set of fixtures and others getting a more difficult set. And, eventually, it would mean playing some teams twice away and only once at home.

An argument I heard was that it would give teams in the bottom half something to play for, ie some sort of trophy for finishing ninth. Doesn't wash with me I'm afraid. Ditch it.

 

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2 hours ago, Den Spark said:

What is it with Scottish football and these ridiculous league splits? Now the East Region North has a proposal to split the 17-team league into two after 16 games and have two leagues of 8 and 9. Then teams would play each other home and away giving a total of 30 or 32 games depending on which half of the league you fall. What's wrong with just playing each other twice, once home, once away, giving a total of 32 games?

The first 16 games of the proposal would skew the table, with some teams perhaps getting an easier home set of fixtures and others getting a more difficult set. And, eventually, it would mean playing some teams twice away and only once at home.

An argument I heard was that it would give teams in the bottom half something to play for, ie some sort of trophy for finishing ninth. Doesn't wash with me I'm afraid. Ditch it.

 

When the split was talked about here before the post-split fixtures were just the reverse ties from the first set of fixtures. Which would cut the season down to 23 + 24 games. It doesn't make much sense if they're still going to play the same amount of games in a condensed season.

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2 hours ago, Den Spark said:

What's wrong with just playing each other twice, once home, once away, giving a total of 32 games?

Because there's a massive gap in quality between the top and bottom teams? Anything that can avoid Broughty, Lochee etc playing the likes of Forfar or Coupar Angus more than once should be welcomed.

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2 hours ago, Ginaro said:

Because there's a massive gap in quality between the top and bottom teams? Anything that can avoid Broughty, Lochee etc playing the likes of Forfar or Coupar Angus more than once should be welcomed.

This. I'm not a huge fan of splits either but the last time we played Couper Angus home and away it was 13-0 and 0-18. 

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3 hours ago, FairWeatherFan said:

When the split was talked about here before the post-split fixtures were just the reverse ties from the first set of fixtures. Which would cut the season down to 23 + 24 games. It doesn't make much sense if they're still going to play the same amount of games in a condensed season.

Carnoustie say it's 16+14=30 circumstances allowing:

 

3 hours ago, FairWeatherFan said:

post-split fixtures were just the reverse ties from the first set of fixtures.

I've noticed looking back that some P&B posters held similar ideas for WOS Premier while it was 20-teams i.e. play 19 > split top 10 + bottom 10 > play 9 = 28 games.

How would that actually work?

Firstly you must get everyone upto game #19 at the same time which is hard given possible weather / public health postponements plus any cup-ties.

Having done so what happens if Club X played 9 home/10 away pre-split but find they've already played perhaps 6 of their post-split opponents at home and 3 away?

Do they play 3 home & 6 away and suffer competitive and potentially commercial disadvantage of playing 12 home & 16 away overall?

Alternatively do you randomly draw 2 teams to visit Club X again, with those teams sufferring disadvantage of facing them 0 home & 2 away? What if that itself creates H/A imbalances for those clubs?

Good luck justifying that with title/promotion playoff and 7 relegation places at stake. Any split or inter-conference model has downsides but those are real biggies IMO.

Edited by HibeeJibee
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4 minutes ago, HibeeJibee said:

 I've noticed looking back that some P&B posters held similar ideas for WOS Premier while it was 20-teams i.e. play 19 > split top 10 + bottom 10 > play 9 = 28 games.

How would that actually work?

Firstly you must get everyone up to game #19 at the same time which is hard given possible weather / public health postponements plus any cup-ties.

Having done so what happens if Club X played 9 home/10 away pre-split but find they've already played perhaps 6 of their post-split opponents at home versus 3 away?

Do they play 3 home & 6 away and suffer competitive and potentially commercial disadvantage of playing 12 home & 16 away overall?

Alternatively do you randomly draw 2 teams to visit Club X again, with those teams sufferring disadvantage of facing them 0 home & 2 away?

Good luck justifying that with title/promotion playoff and 7 relegation places at stake.

I don't think many people have given it that much thought. For me a split at non-league level is unworkable just on the basis of getting everyone finished at the same time. We've just had snapshot of all the leagues finishing in March with wildly different number of games between clubs.

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46 minutes ago, Den Spark said:

Good point re everyone having to complete a set of fixtures at more or less the same time in order to facilitate a split. Never going to happen.

If it looks like the fixtures wont be completed before the split perhaps the outstanding games could be played on our lovely artificial pitch under the floodlights. Strange times call for a bit of thinking outside the box.

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On 20/10/2020 at 16:29, Jimi Shandrix said:

This. I'm not a huge fan of splits either but the last time we played Couper Angus home and away it was 13-0 and 0-18. 

With only 17 teams and a huge golf in standard between teams it's always going to be hard getting a decent structure. Alternative is leagues of 9 and 8, that doesn't sound too great either...

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Time will tell, but not so sure the gulf is that great at the moment. Coupar Angus have improved and Forfar Albion are now Forfar United, with a new management team and players. East Craigie have been excellent the last couple of seasons and will be an asset to the division. Last season Lochee United dropped points to teams they wouldn't have seen in their road a couple of seasons back.

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3 minutes ago, gogsy said:

Why?

 

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They said they would start on 21st November based on the restrictions at the time. In terms of playing football they haven't really changed. In fact there seems to be some regulations that would allow for some clubs to provide changing rooms.

Going by that previous statement there should be a formal announcement of whether or not they'll start in a little over a week.

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