LongTimeLurker

RIP, tackle on Mick Channon at Wembley and 72-73 Cup Final winner never to be forgotten.

The EoS just voted in Luncarty who are north of the line in terms of their registered ground. According to patriot, who is linked to St Andrews United, this was justified by stating that the Tay Bridge midpoint line of latitude boundary on registered ground location only applies to Club 42 and that there are no geographical limits on who can apply to the EoS subject to a vote by the existing membership.

What's your source for the assertion that Option Z was included at the request of the SJFA? Are you aware of the extent to which the SPFL is represented on the SFA board: https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/43410242 https://www.scottishfa.co.uk/scottish-fa/organisation/strategy-structure/who-we-are/board-committees/ Senior SPFL people are present at SFA board meetings, so the left hand inherently knows what the right hand is doing in this context. Consulting the SPFL isn't difficult when Neil Doncaster is sitting in on the SFA's internal decision making board meetings and both organisations have Hampden as their HQ. Note also how Brechin City are repesented by their chairman Ken Ferguson on the SFA's professional game board as one of the SPFL representatives.

All I said was that it wasn't surprising it got knocked back given that backdrop. Didn't want to imply I was in the loop enough to know for sure. Things to note on how the LL is getting along with the SFA at the moment are that the LL received zero backing publicly from the SFA after George Fraser stated in interviews that the Club 42 playoff was an SFA competition rather than an SPFL one when trying to find a way in for Kelty, and that the LL were eventually told by the SFA that they had to use the west superleague 2019-20 table to determine the composition of a single tier 6 WoS division for 2020-21 after initially wanting to run four parallel conferences with all 67 teams. The latter came after WoS clubs were allowed to retain SJFA membership and continue to enter the Junior Cup in what looked like a possible SFA intervention behind the scenes to potentially enable the new WoS to effectively be the west region (continuing). EoS linked posters on here seemed less than gruntled at the time that the west region was advising all members to apply rather than having the WoS as an anti-SJFA breakaway. If the WoS clubs now proceed to vote in SJFA linked officeholders and the north region becomes a tier 6 feeder for the HL, the SJFA will be embedded in the pyramid both north and south for better or worse (I lean more towards the latter posture). Where am I going with this? Although the LL knocked it back this time, it's not necessarily the end of the story, if the rest of Scottish football wants a particular set of changes to be made badly enough. The footballing world doesn't revolve entirely around what the LL and EoS want. It's possible that the LL are simply holding out for something in exchange with automatic relegation of Club 42 being the obvious item for their agenda.

All in the original post. There were media reports that the boundary issue was possibly about to get sorted in favour of the Angus SPFL clubs at around the same time that the SFA asked the various LL feeder related negotiation parties to consider and canvas opinion on Option Z through the PWG process. That boundary shift could only happen through an agreement involving the SPFL, SFA, HL and LL, so it is reasonable to infer that the SFA and SPFL would have been in close contact about what was happening and given the timing that Option Z was designed to be the magic bullet that fixed several pyramid related issues quickly all at once (i.e. how to get the three junior regions in with the SJFA still intact and move Tayside south). That's never been explicitly stated anywhere in mainstream media terms, so I was careful to use wording to highlight that it was based on inference. When the PWG process went tits up is likely to be when the SPFL tried to strongarm the LL into still agreeing the boundary shift in the manner described by George Fraser.

Comic more than anything else that you clearly don't understand the difference between making an inference and using the phrase "seem to have been OK" to make it crystal clear that it was only that and making a claim. You are the one that claimed something to be proven fact and you have not backed it up.

Nothing more than empty bluster and another childish dot because you lack the social skills be able to cope with someone who disagrees with you as a rational intelligent adult. Your failure to provide info about where the SPFL made it very clear that they would accept no more than two tier 5 feeders makes it clear now that you are in fact the person that was making stuff up in that exchange.

OK, Einstein. That's an absurd characterisation of what I did. Here is the exchange in question. At no point did I state there were credible sources (woodpile guy from the WRSJFA doesn't count here) that explictly stated that the SPFL were OK with three feeders. What I did is point to the pieces of information from the mainstream media that are in the public domain from earlier this year that make it a reasonable inference and I used the word "seem" to make it crystal clear to anyone in possession of a three digit IQ that this was based on inference rather than something explicitly stated. You on the other hand in the bolded text below claim that something has been made "very clear". When was that? Can you point me to what you are basing this assertion on without any more empty bluster or childish red dots? The SPFL have NEVER been open to 3 tier 5 feeders. They originally only wanted one feeder, but accepted two as a compromise. They've made very clear more won't be accepted. For that reason "option Z" was a non-starter and shouldn't have been suggested by the SJFA / WRJFA. Whatever the LL thought of it was really irrelevant because it was never seriously on the table. Stop peddling these lies.

That was the narrative from EoS linked people on here who were able to pretty much drown out any other perspective a lot of the time. What I am arguing is that there is strong evidence that the SFA officeholders post McRae/Regan were actually aware of the boundary but simply didn't see it as being all that important and naively expected it to easily be changed to fit the junior regions after the SJFA clubs voted to join the pyramid. Where they very much slipped up was in not understanding quickly enough that the EoS had the ability to block that from happening and would follow through on doing so.

When the Club 42 boundary was initially agreed there was no real expectation that 160+ junior clubs would be joining the party and no huge expectation that anyone other than East Stirlingshire would be getting relegated any time soon given the financial advantages that go with league membership . In senior grade terms there was nothing nonleague on the east coast between Cove and Burntisland so the Tay looked like a sensible dividing line at that point. Circumstances changed and perspectives of what was in the best interests of clubs and leagues were modified accordingly.

It's easy to make a cheap jibe like that and pretend you are saying something profound. We are not talking about Tom Johnston and the SJFA here, but about people who are capable of behaving in a professional manner and who would otherwise be employable in a professional setting.

I can easily dig up the urls for the media stories from back in January related to the boundary shift and the info related to Option Z. I'll take your bluster on this as a sign that you can't do something similar. The idea that the SFA would even raise Option Z without sounding out the HL and SPFL about it first is bizarre, but you and others on here clearly seem to believe that's how they would operate.

Can you point me to a source of information to back that up?

The SPFL seem to have been OK with three feeders when Option Z was up for discussion in a PWG context back in January. There were indications in the media that a boundary shift to please the Angus SPFL clubs was anticipated at that point and Option Z would have provided that with an HL (NCL + north region), LL East (EoS + east region) and LL West (SoS + west region) pyramid arrangement feeding into the Club 42 playoff. The LL did not agree to split, which they had to do to eliminate the EoS effective veto over the LL tier 6 promotion playoff format, so that got nowhere. The WoS had to be pursued instead to get the west region clubs in after things reached a complete impasse between the LL/EoS and the SJFA on what to do next. That left the remaining east region clubs out in the cold. This leaves Tayside in limbo to a significant extent, because the HL is still only negotiating with the NCL + north region and Tayside seemingly never even rates a mention as a future possibility in that context. The SFA, HL and SPFL appear to want Tayside to go south, the EoS appear open to voting on applications from Tayside clubs after Luncarty got in despite being marginally north of the Club 42 relegation rule boundary, but the attitude of the LL to what will unfold long term remains unclear and could still prove to be problematic. The LL clubs rejected a change to the Club 42 relegation rule boundary at their recent AGM in the aftermath of Kelty or Brora not getting a playoff against Brechin City this year.

With Caledonian in their name and no Thistle they might even attract some fans in an Inverness context.

No idea how you reached that conclusion. The SFA hosted a series of PWG meetings after the 2018 SJFA AGM voted for pyramid entry with a view to getting the east region superleague (Tayside included) and the west superleague hooked up to the LL as tier 6 feeders, with the north superleague and NCL being the only relevant leagues in the negotiations where the HL is concerned (which initially went nowhere but recently appear to have been making progress). The LL and EoS were able to block east and west superleague entry as tier 6 feeders as they need to sign off on any change to the tier 6 promotion into the LL and hence had an effective veto over new feeders. The EoS in particular was bitterly opposed to the idea of a second east feeder. The SFA and SoS didn't have any problem, but the WoS eventually had to be set up instead to get the west region clubs in with the east region left out in the cold in pyramid terms. As things stand it's obvious enough what the South Premiership east region clubs need to do (i.e. join the EoS at tier 8), but Tayside is stuck in limbo to a certain extent. They are not part of the HL tier 6 negotiations on the one hand and although Luncarty got into the EoS OK this year it's not 100% clear that they can access the south pyramid through the EoS on the other. Most of the relevant stakeholders involved appear to want Tayside to go south judging from their actions, but the LL have to sign off on a change to the Club 42 playoff rule before the issue can be fully resolved as the boundary is currently the midpoint of the Tay Road Bridge in that context. The LL clubs knocked that back at their recent AGM. Brechin City (who were less than enthralled at the prospect of joining the HL and had been instrumental in pushing for the change earlier this year as they have a representative on the SPFL board) and the SPFL aren't exactly flavour of the month with them right now because of the way they used the COVID19 pandemic as an excuse to cancel the 2019-20 Club 42 playoff, so that's understandable enough.

No indication that's on anybody's agenda. There was a podcast a few weeks back involving officeholders from both the north and east (Lochee United) regions where the pyramid was discussed in depth and that scenario was never mentioned. You need to give a year's notice to change regions in the SJFA through the relevant AGMs, so if any individual Tayside club was planning to do Invergowrie Arab's option three by 2021-22 we would have already heard about it. The north region is widely expected to be at tier 6 by then along with the North Caledonian League.

Beyond sorting out a fixture list, something the LL was doing more professionally than the west region until very recent seasons, what's supposed to be so challenging? The SFA handles issues like player registration, referee appointments and player discipline at tier 6 level, so there actually isn't all that much involved in logistical terms.

6 to 13 isn't almost trebled and they are not completely out of the woods in numbers terms yet. It remains to be seen what would happen if they ever attempted to play a 40+ fixture date season that would overlap and directly compete with the summer amateur leagues once they become a mainstream tier 6 feeder. Hope it all works out for them and the likes of Alness, Tain and Thurso eventually become viable possibilities for promotion to the HL but people need to grasp the scale of the sea change needed for that to happen.

These are basically amateur teams playing on not much more than public parks in some cases. Not sure whether you would always even need to pay to watch. The NCL was close to folding in recent years because of lack of numbers and was playing a relatively short season, because the further north you get in Scotland the more a summer season format tends to be favoured by local amateur leagues as daylight hours are shorter and weather conditions can be more horrendous than is the case further south in the winter. Will be interesting to see if more interest would shift over to the NCL's winter format if/when they become a tier 6 feeder.

The driving force behind the pyramid was Alan McRae of Cove Rangers and he successfully worked his way up the greasy pole in SFA terms to a point where he was able to pull Stewart Regan's strings. The club that was pivotal in the south for pushing the Cove Rangers agenda was Spartans. Those two clubs wanted into the SPFL very badly and anything that they orchestrated was geared primarily towards that outcome rather than the pyramid concept. Tom Johnston was probably viewed as a useful idiot from their standpoint. His actions made it easy to justify moves to actively exclude junior clubs from licensing and the Scottish Cup and generally keep the grade structure very much intact. That way Cove and Spartans had the inside track on promotion into the SPFL. Telling top west region clubs that their only way to get licensed was to join the SoS was really taking the piss. Meanwhile back at the ranch, a chink in the armour emerged. The EoS was teetering on the verge of collapse in numbers terms and proved ripe for takeover by east region clubs with licensing ambitions that saw through Tom Johnston's 150k toilet block patter. Now Kelty, Bonnyrigg and Bo'ness being around make a Spartans SPFL promotion a longshot with the west soon to follow because Edinburgh City stole their thunder on being Embra's third club. The best laid plans of mice and men... Tayside has been royally shafted in all of this as they are now looking at tier 8 EoS entry after initially being generally assumed to not be EoS eligible. Hopefully the clubs concerned get to pursue Invergowrie Arab's option one when the time comes because don't hold your breath on HL clubs falling over themselves to endorse option two. The NCL and north region are not much of a threat to the status quo, so no harm negotiating with them. Maybe swap Fort William for Banks o' Dee if SPFL relegation brought things up to 18 and the league was capped at that, basically. If the top Tayside junior clubs ever embraced a Highland League future there would be scope for a lot more to happen than that...

Of course it is relevant. You need to understand the actions of both the SJFA blazers in actively discouraging and threatening clubs and the three licensed clubs (Spartans, Threave and Preston) that initiated the formation of the LL in not fostering a scenario that would have made it easy for lots of junior clubs to apply and all be accepted into the new structure at the same time to fully understand why junior clubs like Clydebank and Blackburn that had been saying they were interested in surverys felt unable to take the plunge. More than one of the parties involved in a negotiation process can have a negative impact on the eventual outcome for cynical self-serving reasons. There doesn't have to be a simplistic binary good guy bad guy thing going on with only Tom Johnston as the pantomine style villian.

So clearly not. Time for a new ignore list entry.

I hope that means you won't waste my time like this again.

Bizarre that this flurry of posts was caused by something as inocuous as this: in reponse to this: