LongTimeLurker

I would hope that the Lowland League will in the next few weeks announce that the BU's are being accommodated in a 17 team league for next season...... obviously that arrangement would be subject to the BU's being successful in their licence application. Think if you do the PPG calculation for the SoS it is Stranraer reserves that are champions and they can't be promoted, which is why it's always 17 that gets mentioned as in the tweet above.

Restrictions are going to ease up in severity over time as an increasing portion of the population has already been through the virus and a new peak in infections is no longer likely to collapse the NHS. Stockholm is already claiming to be only weeks away from reaching herd immunity after Sweden steered clear of a rigid lockdown. Nicola S was saying stuff that was aimed more at UEFA still wanting the Old Firm to finish off 2019-20 this summer than at what's going to be happening in 2020-21 with Crossgates Primrose after that.

A lot of people would have been travelling from Hubei province all over the world late last year and into January and with an R0 > 3 it would be surprising if the virus wasn't already in the UK and most other western countries with extensive air travel by late January If some of the random sampling antibody tests of the wider population that are being reported from Germany, Sweden and the United States are accurate (big if because the tests might not be specific enough for COVID19) then there could easily have already been over 50× as many infections as the official numbers based on testing. If most cases are mild or asymptomatic, it could also easily have taken many weeks to get enough serious cases on the go for the uptick on non-influenza pneumonia to be statistically noticeable in hospitals. The lockdown may turn out to be a case of locking the stable door well after the horse had already bolted.

Maybe for Ibrox and Parkhead, which is what Nicola S mainly would have had in mind, but 150 people can distance themselves quite effectively at an EoS ground.

So in summary, some people are now arguing it's OK to relegate clubs from tier 7 on PPG but not OK to promote clubs if their club narrowly lost out on that basis. You really need to get over it now and move on.

It would be unfair and unprofessional to move the goalposts after publicly announcing that there would be tier 7 conferences again before the application deadline. You lost the vote on that issue. Deal with it and move on. Any West Lothian entrants at the end of next season will be at tier 8, so you are getting what you want in the not too distant future.

https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/2638324/port-juniors-el-dorado-sponsors-port-glasgow/

You had Ally McCoist in that era as well.

Used to hear it claimed that Frank Swift played for Hamilton Accies as a guest player during WWII so he would probably be the best. Think there was a goalie called McLean who threw the ball into his own net in the early 70s who might be up there for the worst.

Have looked but nothing obvious in the various constitutions.

Suspect it will all boil down to whether Brechin City and the other Angus SPFL clubs are able to get a rule change made to the Club 42 playoff. Seems a bit mental that some people would see Luncarty as OK but Carnoustie, Broughty and Lochee as absurdly distant but that perception does appear to be strongly held in some quarters.

These games happened from 1929 to 1990. I vaguely remember reading about the Shetland team going to Faroe on a fishing boat at one point or maybe vice versa. There have sometimes been seasonal ferry links between Lerwick, Kirkwall, Bergen and Torshavn but they don't tend to last long.

Shetland won 6 out of 24 games played apparently: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shetland_football_team Given there would usually have been no direct commercial transport links the effort needed to keep that fixture going shows that both sides must have seen it as worthwhile in a competitive sense.

Tell that to Brechin City.

There is no indication that the HL see the Tayside juniors as a potential tier 6 feeder. They only ever mention the NCL and the north region in that context. Tayside is in no man's land because neither the LL/EoS or HL appear to want them.

So looking good for promotion if the EoS end of season plan gets approved and the LL are taking the same approach as is being used by the EoS premier of expanding by a couple of teams to avoid relegating clubs while still accepting more teams from below. The snippet of info from Bonnyrigg Rose that bigwullieAC highlighted strongly suggests they are.

That's not clear. The only clearly written rule covers what happens to Club 42 if they get relegated. Luncarty are not Club 42 so there is nothing obvious stopping the EoS from accepting them. There is nothing in the various constitutions on what happens with the HL:LL boundary going up the pyramid in the opposite direction from Club 42.

There's no ambiguity in the club 42 playoff rules. Any registered ground north of the exact line of latitude is in the HL catchment, so if they can be flexible on this one there's no obvious reason why they can't be flexible all the way up to Brechin Vics beyond simply not wanting to. If/when Brechin City get their way on Angus clubs getting relegated to the LL could Lochee United really be asked to enter at tier 8? All a bit of a mess.

No easy answers on this one. The population is too low and dispersed to be able to easily draw the crowds needed to make it worth the players time to do all the travel needed to participate at a level on the mainland that is likely to draw a lot of paying spectators.

Shetland has plenty of football in the summer and even quite small communities like Burra have fitba pitches, so it's not like rugby where they probably do need the mainland angle due to the lack of local competition. It's too bad Shetland doesn't have more autonomy like the Faroese or they could have had their own national team and Champions and Europa League entrants. Just a wee bit too close to Caithness and Orkney or history could have been very different.

Have heard the Shetland team do that as well. The limit I could see islands teams being able to do would be Scottish Cup entry if there was a generous travel subsidy. Given how many clubs are likely to get licensed in the years ahead I'd place that in don't hold your breath territory.

Main criticism would be that a team in the top half of the table after 26 games clearly doesn't belong in a relegation playoff. The 36-40 game season imbalance is also less than ideal.

Not convinced that the team sitting out on the last day thing is an insurmountable problem, if it's the team that was in seventh place at the split.

A 7-7 split provides 38 games for both sections in the top tier with 40 fixture dates. Might work better than a 6-8 split. The other three divisions could stick at 10 if Kelty and Brora are added.