Formation Of Lowland League

[cmontheloknow]

The fish rots from the head down, as the saying goes.

Not every delegate and club had that point of view as it was scorned on this very forum before nightfall.

[Arthurlie1981]

16 minutes ago, cmontheloknow said:

The fish rots from the head down, as the saying goes.

Not every delegate and club had that point of view as it was scorned on this very forum before nightfall.

Clubs were lead down the garden path on a number of occasions with certain things put forward by the SJFA.

I have always wondered what would have happened if the "super dooper league" had come to fruition but alas it was blocked by the majority of West Premier League clubs from Ayrshire at the time. I remember the angry reaction of the East clubs and when most resigned a couple of years later to move the the EOSL I wasn't surprised. 

[wow-wee]

9 minutes ago, cmontheloknow said:

The fish rots from the head down, as the saying goes.

Not every delegate and club had that point of view as it was scorned on this very forum before nightfall

Amongst the West region club's I would say there was a 100% agreement with TJ and all the delegates at that time the suspicion was starting in the east then as history now shows it was one huge scare mongering lie . Like ourselves and many other SFA licenced club's now flourishing in the newly formed regions there are no gold plated bogs.

[Arthurlie1981]

4 minutes ago, wow-wee said:

Amongst the West region club's I would say there was a 100% agreement with TJ and all the delegates at that time the suspicion was starting in the east then as history now shows it was one huge scare mongering lie . Like ourselves and many other SFA licenced club's now flourishing in the newly formed regions there are no gold plated bogs.

I can guarantee you that we were not in agreement with SJFA over the direction of the game at that time. I gave some comments to the BBC at the time criticising the SJFA only to receive a call from them telling me of the implications if we ever did leave (reduced gates being the death of my club so I was told). Ultimately we decided not to take forward our application for the LL or explore other options at that time due to some of the reasons that Hillonearth commented on earlier. We weren't the only ones in the west either (most of the old central clubs looked at the options available to them).

[cmontheloknow]

Pollok were never anti-pyramid either as the years rolled by. We had officials on the printed record being in favour. We always voted positively on any pyramid survey that came in the door from Hampden. We were one of the 24 clubs (?) that voted for the pyramid back in the 00s. Obviously some were far more outspoken against (Talbot for one) but the doomsday merchants were given absolute backing to do so by the powers that be.

[wow-wee]

1 hour ago, Arthurlie1981 said:

I can guarantee you that we were not in agreement with SJFA over the direction of the game at that time. I gave some comments to the BBC at the time criticising the SJFA only to receive a call from them telling me of the implications if we ever did leave (reduced gates being the death of my club so I was told). Ultimately we decided not to take forward our application for the LL or explore other options at that time due to some of the reasons that Hillonearth commented on earlier. We weren't the only ones in the west either (most of the old central clubs looked at the options available to them).

I'm surprised to hear about this I thought at the time every West team was buying into TJs dont do it your better of where you are and if we do go to we all go under the SJFA banner. Suppose if more club's had spoken more loosely amongst them selves the pyramid maybe would have kicked in earlier . My club The buffs were at the forefront to break away from the junior setup and it took a lot of debate and some really heated ones at that to get it started then the bankies and rutherglen came on board  and the rest is history.

[Inanimate Carbon Rod]

47 minutes ago, wow-wee said:

I'm surprised to hear about this I thought at the time every West team was buying into TJs dont do it your better of where you are and if we do go to we all go under the SJFA banner. Suppose if more club's had spoken more loosely amongst them selves the pyramid maybe would have kicked in earlier . My club The buffs were at the forefront to break away from the junior setup and it took a lot of debate and some really heated ones at that to get it started then the bankies and rutherglen came on board  and the rest is history.

Thats not entirely correct, Bankies fans voted massively in favour of joining the pyramid 2 years before the wosl happened. 

[Bestsinceslicebread]

14 hours ago, sweep said:

When the Lowland league was formed a huge question mark hung over my head. I asked myself why are no top Junior sides being asked to participate. I was taken aback by the way the league was formed. We had top sides in Ayrshire, Central, The East, Tayside, Fife and the north that were not include in its formation. Perhaps it was something to do do with the word Juniors.

Who made the decision to form this feeder league? as a stepping stone to possible Scottish league football and to introduce the pyramid system .I have nothing against the Pyramid system but question the way the Lowland league was set up.

Today I look at the Lowland league and I see Tranent JUNIORS sitting proudly at the top of the  league  I saw Tranent play last year and they are a very good side. They beat Darvel to secure their place in the Lowland league. I honestly believe that a number of very good JUNIOR sides were ignored and denied status when the Lowland league was set up . Perhaps somebody can explain why

I have had a right good laugh at this when you started this post and the first reply was, "is this a serious post'  and yeah I agree if you watched the juniors in the past 10 years then you would really know how do you not know all the crap that went on. Lowland started in 2013 and first entered the pyramid in 2014/15 when officials of the lowland league and clubs has the foresight to seek an opportunity to be part of the pyrmaid

The juniors have been dwindling and when they had the chances to join, the hiarachy did not want to and rumors saying this and that went on for ages.  Most of the crap is on this forums, especially the junior section.  The junior bosses were all fighting for supremacy and power struggles and to be honest it all backfired. Playing wise, back then in the junior leagues, all you can do is win the premier league and then start all over again the following season, so quite frankly boring.  Now, if you win the top league you can progress higher up and see where you can get too,  Some don't want to, then that's their prerogative, all that has happed due to the Lowland starting Tier 5 is that those top junior teams are going to take longer in getting up the leagues, if they want to try for that and its one reason and one main reason alone, they listened to the junior beaks, thinking the junior beaks knew better

The juniors was great to me and I loved it during my playing days but when it boils down to it, in Scotland we have a working pyramid that Factually any team in the country can rise through the divisions, there are stumbling blocks with SPFL2 stopping automictic relegation and thus Lowland saying they don't want automictic 3 up 3 down until the SPFL2 open up.

 

Teams like Tranent JUNIORS, many have kept the name for a certain reason, maybe because they just couldn't handle losing juniors in the title, some kept it as they felt it was part of their history, Some teams moved to the pyramid and felt they were forced to and wanted to stay in the junior leagues but couldn't so kept the title.  Personally, i wouldn't have it but get why many have.  Its a new future of Scottish football now, and a new history to be made, as its now a working pyramid system and there are teams through the divisions who should not be in their division, they should be higher or lower and eventually it will all happen, just going to take a bit longer than we all had HOPED

[Ginaro]

Wikipedia has a section which seems to summarise it fairly well? Thing is with all the clubs now getting licensed (and even just making upgrades, as floodlights weren't a requirement prior to 2019) we can see how obviously wrong all the scare mongering was.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowland_Football_League

Formation

The Lowland League was founded by a unanimous vote of members of the Scottish Football Association (SFA) on 11 June 2013,^[3] The league would be composed of teams drawn from the East of Scotland, South of Scotland, and junior leagues, who met on 17 June 2013 to elect between them the founder-members of the new league.^[11]

While most clubs were invited to submit bids to join, Preston Athletic, The Spartans and Threave Rovers were offered automatic entry as they were already fully licensed by the SFA.^[11] While 27 clubs had registered their interest, the Lowland League received 17 applications to join.^[12] After the meeting on 17 June, it was announced there would be 12 teams in the league, and that they would be: Dalbeattie Star, East Kilbride, Edinburgh City, Gala Fairydean Rovers, Gretna 2008, Preston Athletic, Selkirk, The Spartans, Threave Rovers, University of Stirling, Vale of Leithen, and Whitehill Welfare.^[13]

 

 

[PossilYM]

12 minutes ago, Ginaro said:

Wikipedia has a section which seems to summarise it fairly well? Thing is with all the clubs now getting licensed (and even just making upgrades, as floodlights weren't a requirement prior to 2019) we can see how obviously wrong all the scare mongering was.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowland_Football_League

Formation

The Lowland League was founded by a unanimous vote of members of the Scottish Football Association (SFA) on 11 June 2013,^[3] The league would be composed of teams drawn from the East of Scotland, South of Scotland, and junior leagues, who met on 17 June 2013 to elect between them the founder-members of the new league.^[11]

While most clubs were invited to submit bids to join, Preston Athletic, The Spartans and Threave Rovers were offered automatic entry as they were already fully licensed by the SFA.^[11] While 27 clubs had registered their interest, the Lowland League received 17 applications to join.^[12] After the meeting on 17 June, it was announced there would be 12 teams in the league, and that they would be: Dalbeattie Star, East Kilbride, Edinburgh City, Gala Fairydean Rovers, Gretna 2008, Preston Athletic, Selkirk, The Spartans, Threave Rovers, University of Stirling, Vale of Leithen, and Whitehill Welfare.^[13]

 

 

Interesting that 6 of them have since left the league.

Edinburgh City went onwards and upwards.

Selkirk sadly went defunct when the main money man left. Think the chap was the only backer the club had.

Disappointments imo were/are East Kilbride FC who promised much and ultimately failed to deliver.

[Killiepiyo]

Enjoying reading this so far, I will say however that it’s a tad too convenient for some parties to blame everything on TJ and the juniors. Used for example on the other thread in respects of ‘we’d be a lot further forward if it was was years messing about’. For me we could go over and over some shocking behaviours etc but it doesn’t change the here and now. Heard some people refer to me as XYZ or anti progress but I’ve always advocated for relegation promotion from non to league football, truth is I was treated pretty horrendously by faces of the past so have no love there. 

Issue for me is we’re still locked out but at least we now have a foot in the door. I want the present leadership not to point fingers into the past but focus on getting rid of the bottle necks. 

[stanley]

49 minutes ago, PossilYM said:

Interesting that 6 of them have since left the league.

Edinburgh City went onwards and upwards.

Selkirk sadly went defunct when the main money man left. Think the chap was the only backer the club had.

Disappointments imo were/are East Kilbride FC who promised much and ultimately failed to deliver.

I get that East Kilbride might have been expected to kick on and reach the SPFL by now, I think it's a bit harsh on them. They've finished 8th, 2nd, 5th, 1st, 2nd, 1st, 7th, 2nd, 4th (2nd without the B teams) and are currently 6th (4th without the B teams). They've consistently been one of the strongest teams. They might have missed their chance at promotion with the gradual promotion of ex-juniors from the WoS/EoS but they have, at least, remained one of the strongest teams so far.

[wow-wee]

1 hour ago, Inanimate Carbon Rod said:

Thats not entirely correct, Bankies fans voted massively in favour of joining the pyramid 2 years before the wosl happened. 

Yeah your right about the bankies fans voting to go to the pyramid 2 years prior to the wosfl being formed it was all over here about going East . The meeting I'm talking about happened roughly 7/8 years prior to the bankies fans voting.

[FairWeatherFan]

1 minute ago, wow-wee said:

The meeting I'm talking about happened roughly 7/8 years prior to the bankies fans voting.

Clydebank were one of the Juniors that looked into applying for the Lowland League originally.

[LongTimeLurker]

54 minutes ago, Killiepiyo said:

Enjoying reading this so far, I will say however that it’s a tad too convenient for some parties to blame everything on TJ and the juniors...

TJ was a useful idiot for clubs like Spartans and Cove Rangers who were driving the whole thing when Alan McRae was SFA president. The fix was in when they had no plan to accomodate all applicants similar to what happened with the launch of the WoS and telling clubs in the west later on that they had to join the SoS league to get licensed was taking the piss. Says something about how the process unfolded that even Clydebank baulked at making the switch. If Kelty hadn't done what they did by joining the EoS league to get licensed we might still be arguing about this stuff on here.

Edited January 29, 2023 by LongTimeLurker

[PossilYM]

Kelty Hearts blew the whole thing wide open 

[FairWeatherFan]

9 minutes ago, LongTimeLurker said:

The fix was in when they had no plan to accomodate all applicants

They had no plan to accomodate all applicants, because they were only forming one division. Everyone was allowed to tack their league underneath: SoSFL, EoSFL, West Region, and East Region.

It was the SJFA that "nah, we're in no rush. Oh, by the way we don't want to have mandatory promotion or change our rules".

[Inanimate Carbon Rod]

34 minutes ago, FairWeatherFan said:

Clydebank were one of the Juniors that looked into applying for the Lowland League originally.

It wasnt discussed in any great detail, was felt that our ground arrangements werent strong enough to support the premise of the LL at that time. 

[PossilYM]

2 hours ago, stanley said:

I get that East Kilbride might have been expected to kick on and reach the SPFL by now, I think it's a bit harsh on them. They've finished 8th, 2nd, 5th, 1st, 2nd, 1st, 7th, 2nd, 4th (2nd without the B teams) and are currently 6th (4th without the B teams). They've consistently been one of the strongest teams. They might have missed their chance at promotion with the gradual promotion of ex-juniors from the WoS/EoS but they have, at least, remained one of the strongest teams so far.

Definitely believe EKFC will be the last of the 12 originals to leave the LL. 

That could be in either direction depending on money or future LL relegation/promotion expansion.

[Hillonearth]

5 hours ago, Arthurlie1981 said:

I can guarantee you that we were not in agreement with SJFA over the direction of the game at that time. I gave some comments to the BBC at the time criticising the SJFA only to receive a call from them telling me of the implications if we ever did leave (reduced gates being the death of my club so I was told). Ultimately we decided not to take forward our application for the LL or explore other options at that time due to some of the reasons that Hillonearth commented on earlier. We weren't the only ones in the west either (most of the old central clubs looked at the options available to them).

Yeah, it seems to be one of the enduring myths around what transpired that all the West teams were entirely happy with the status quo when in many cases the opposite was the truth. I think I've said on here before that we were quite pro-change, but assumed we'd be in a minority before speaking to people from a few clubs I'd certainly previously thought of as being traditional "juniory" setups and finding they were just as up for change as we were.

You can pretty much judge where the clubs were on the page regarding change by the order they declared they were applying for the WOS....I'd say the first few dozen were genuinely up for it, there would have been some more ambivalent ones after that, and the last 15-20 only applied reluctantly because they realised the kind of blasted hellscape they'd be left to play in after most of the other sides left.

While picking over the bones of how we ended up so far behind the curve compared to the other side of the country won't retroactively fix that fact, it's at least useful to be aware of the reasons of how it came to pass...I'd said on the other thread that blame can be apportioned to a combination of the SJFA and at least some of the clubs who hadn't done due diligence.

I attended both of those meetings just before the first lockdown that effectively ended the old West Region and set up the WOSFL, and for me the clincher of the SJFA one at Hampden was when one of the delegates present - from memory it was the guy from Pollok - effectively backed the SJFA into a corner where they had to admit they were now in the business of prioritising their own survival over the best interests of "their" clubs, which in itself I found interestingly proprietorial language.

I wouldn't lump it all on them though...as I said, some of the clubs should shoulder at least some of the blame by the way they accepted what they were being told at face value and then buried their heads in the sand hoping it would all go away. Some of the club statements in the aftermath made it obvious that they didn't quite understand what was going on...we had quite a few thinking they'd been asked to join the LL, others thinking the new league would be under the auspices of the SJFA and so on.