LongTimeLurker

Just read elwewhere that Brora Rangers have lost their sugar daddy? Won't be long until they are prime candidates for relegation to the NCL if that's accurate.

Tayside crashing the party moves things from a scenario where playoffs were likely to usually favour the HL team after BoD replaced Fort William to where up to half the HL need to be seriously worried about where they are likely to be playing their fitba in 5-10 years time. Winding things back to this subforum's subject matter how heartbroken would the HL be to lose the Midlands League to the LL as a tier 6 feeder given that backdrop?

Think they were always angling for either the east superleague or a Midlands League to be a fourth LL feeder but the EoS could and can still block that because of the way approval to changes to the tier 6 promotion playoff rule work (SFA, LL, EoS, SoS and now WoS all need to sign off). Lochee were and are unlikely to be keen on the point of entry into the EoS being at tier 9 level so when push came to shove with the Forfar West End application they preferred the HL feeder scenario which the EoS had no issue with and were happy to help facilitate by knocking back the three applications from north of Tayport. It's the LL rather than the EoS that have to block changes to the Club 42 rule to keep the Tay Bridge midpoint in any way relevant in all of this (SFA, SPFL and HL all seem to want a change in that context) and there was always a good chance the LL would cave on that in exchange for something else that they wanted. George Fraser seems to have opened the door to that potentially happening in time for next season by not getting the Old Firm Colts rule changes fully signed off before the season started with said Colts on board and hence handing the SFA board lots of leverage. If the LL agree to a Club 42 rule change, the next target for lots of arm twisting to have Dundee and Angus aligned with the LL rather than the HL would then no doubt be the EoS.

It was originally in the WoSFL subforum before winding up in Domestic Cups. People who mainly used the Junior subforum previously that covered everything in the Junior grade including cups are not used to that way of doing things yet. Over the last few days Junior Cup related threads were moved out of the WoSFL subforum. The same approach now appears to have been applied to this Scottish Cup thread as well.

Now Bo'ness are extreme longshots for promotion my interest in this topic has dwindled considerably at least until this time next year but judging from what is on the geneal chat LL thread I had managed to overestimate George Fraser's competence level when I wrote some of the above posts. Ploughing ahead with colt team entry before the SFA had actually had time to fully sign off on it appears to have opened the door to having all sorts of pressure applied to finally have the Tay Bridge midpoint line of latitude boundary removed from the Club 42 playoff rule. Who knows, Brechin City may yet be making an appearance for 2022-23 from stage right? The tail normally isn't allowed to wag the dog within any hierarchical organisation.

Think you missed my point. The subforum for all shared cup competitions like the Scottish Cup is supposed to be Domestic Cups. If SJC threads are being moved off this subforum because they are cup rather than league related this one should be as well. I deliberately raised the point of where to discuss the SJC with Div and requested that he moved an existing SJC thread to Domestic Cups so there would be a possibility of discussing the footballing aspects of that competition minus all the bizarre senior vs junior tribalism some people still seem to be obsessed with.

To draw an analogy with George Orwell's Animal Farm it will be interesting to see if some cups are more equal than others on here.

...they're aw oot o step except oor Jock.

A few folk on here will be very happy about one addition to today's lineup:

Interesting to see what is being campaigned for on rail in the NE: https://www.eveningexpress.co.uk/fp/news/local/how-to-cut-half-a-million-car-journeys-and-32k-tonnes-of-carbon-in-a-year-a-new-regional-railway-is-the-answer/

Think full membership kicks in after 12 months, which I always took to mean from the next AGM onwards but you may well be correct. Worth reading the constitution very carefully to figure out what you can and can't do where the next AGM is concerned.

Then put in motions at the next EoS AGM to change the rulebook and try to replace the present set of officeholders and fixture secretary. The vast majority of EoS clubs are now from a recent SJFA background and most only joined the EoS reluctantly. If a majority want to prioritise mandatory SJC participation over the SCC in future it can happen. If it turns out there is no appetite for that maybe accept times have moved on and go with the flow.

That and there's the small matter of having to do a reverse at Dunfermline to be able to reach Edinburgh from Alloa and vice versa. The Alloa to Dunfermline line that would have been an absolute no brainer as a passenger line after Stirling to Alloa got reinstated was the Dunfermline Upper route via Oakley but unfortunately it got built over in central Dunfermline post-Miners strike.

But if she's Saudi people will suddenly grow strangely silent and if she's Syrian it will suddenly be OK for the mainstream western media narrative to cheerlead the dismantling of the state that was providing some secular modernity so a bunch of medieval headchoppers can take over instead in a similar sort of manner to what happened in Afghanistan in the 80s and early 90s because ultimately what really matters in all of this is the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

The problem with accomodating Argyll & Bute teams in a way that lasts is going to be that WoS plays a lot of midweek fixtures. A shorter season mainly just weekends North Caledonian League type setup for that specific area might be the more realistic way to set them on a path to licensing etc.

What do you think is the better option that has a credible chance of actually happening? From what I've ever been able to make out Assad's regime has only survived this long because it has massive popular support from various non-Sunni minorities in both Syria and Lebanon and from the urban secular portion of the Syrian population derived from the assessment that he was the least bad option for them. Even the Kurdish forces that the Americans backed have never outright broken off relations with the Assad regime for that sort of reason.

None of these Gulf states are exactly renowned for being paragons of virtue on women's equality while the Baath party controlled states further north that NATO targeted did push it quite a bit and were very much pro-secular. Probably easier to set up and maintain the petrodollar cycle with kleptocratic monarchies though so no huge shock that the boat has never been rocked on that. The scary thing about the Syrian Civil War was that the neighbouring NATO member appears to have been cooperating with ISIS on illicit oil sales and the United States Airforce and the western media appeared to be turning a blind eye to it as ISIS advanced remorsely towards Damascus, Aleppo Homs and Hama. Only at that point did Putin intervene when it became clear that NATO powers were probably not going to do anything to prevent a hardline Sunni Islamist takeover of Syria. That wasn't without an element of self-interest as the Assad regime stands in the way of gas pipelines from the Gulf through Turkey to Europe that could be very bad news for the Russian economy.

No replays AFAIA. That was part of the deal that enabled the WoS clubs to stay in. Not 100% sure on the straight to penalties or extra time angle but probably the former. Can remember how the ref handled that being controversial at the end of a replay of a Blantyre Vics vs Bo'ness United tie a few seasons back because it should have gone straight to pens rather than extra time: https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/sport/football/boness-blantyre-cup-tie-incorrectly-sent-extra-time-610579

There was an authentically homegrown Afghan movement that wanted to modernise Afghan society complete with equality for women back in the 1970s with even the Soviet Union telling them to keep the heid and slow doon a wee bit before stumbling into an intervention when that advice wasn't followed: Might have been better in the long run if the West hadn't sent in Osama and various other Islamist crazies to obliterate them?

How did the SJFA seriously expect EoS clubs to participate if the EoS fixture secretary wasn't going to be coordinating this with them? Were they naive enough to think the EoS would play nice over this if presented with a fait accompli? Lunatic blazer politics continues unabated.

The Taliban haven't taken the Panjshir valley yet and the vice president of the now deposed western backed regime has fled there claiming to be the legitimate caretaker president. Probably best filed under good luck with that but it remains to be seen if the Taliban can secure and maintain control over all of Afghanistan and who the former Soviet states to the north would support if many of their co-ethnics were in ongoing open rebellion against a Pashtun dominated and Pakistan aligned Kabul regime in the years ahead. Everything isn't automatically hunkydory once NATO leaves. As for whether the US Empire is dead bear in mind that if a certain Saudi lunatic hadn't orchestrated 9/11 they would never have been in there in the first place and ultimately they decided to withdraw rather than being forced out. US influence reached a high water mark after the Cold War that was never going to be maintained long term. They are still the top global superpower but things are back to how they were in the 60s and 70s in terms of them not always getting everything their own way. The Taliban are playing nice over the evacuation and are saying all the right things to the western media right now because they understand that reality.

They also managed to bomb the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and a passenger train along the way. The problem was that Milosevic didn't give in as easily as anticipated in terms of responding rationally to a display of overwhelming military might (had they ever spent any time around Yugoslavs of a certain vintage?), so they had to keep widening the list of targets well beyond what could justifiably be described as military in nature to keep the whole thing going until he finally capitulated. To people following the western media narrative it all seemed justifiable enough, but a lot of the world still views it in the same sort of category as Russian interventions in Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Crimea in terms of legality and still refuse to recognise Kosovo.

No, only pointing out that talk of the next two games being pivotal in terms of entering a battle at the bottom is wide of the mark and that there should be some patience beyond that before pressing the panic button. Obviously that patience shouldn't be open ended.