LongTimeLurker

Still works for me.

Lesson #1916. Talking up your Irish-American heritage isn't going to work the way it did for JFK if you are a Prod.

Hence why expelling the rebels and losing Remain leaning cabinet ministers helps him even though he loses his majority in the process. The opposition getting an extension and then forcing an election before a hard Brexit also helps him because it means there is no hard border chaos related wake up call for Leave voters before they vote. End result he gets a solid majority against an opposition split between several Remain or soft Brexit options with no need to have the DUP involved any more, which gives him more room for manouevre on the RoI border, and has five years to try to regain popularity after finally pushing through a hard Brexit. He knows what he is doing.

That's the scary part if there is no Brexit party involvement to split the Leave vote. Johnson and his advisors may be thinking two or three steps ahead.

There is an alternative interpretation in which the Highland League is obligated to take newly licensed clubs in their catchment. They plan to only move from a single division format if they have more than 20 clubs, so as things stand there may be no need for promotion and relegation from the NCL or NRSJFA and hence nothing obvious for a northern PWG to discuss. The SFA Board seem to think there is confusion about the HL-LL boundary that needs to be addressed at future PWG meetings, so you don't have the final say on that particular matter.

Here's a possible pathway to compromise: 1. The SFA clarifies that they really meant 56 degrees 45 minutes 13 seconds so that all of ERSJFA is now in the LL catchment and the HL no longer has to worry about what to do with the Tayside juniors making progress considerably easier in the north as well as the south. Montrose Roselea can stay where they are but can't get licensed and progress if they do. 2. The EoS is the official feeder for all eastern traditional counties other than Dundee and Angus (with Stirlingshire truncated south of the Campsies around Dennyloanhead and the railway viaduct so Kilsyth is west, and Perthshire truncated so anything east of Scone and north of Luncarty is Tayside) and clubs from that area have to be in it to be able to get licensed and progress, but existing clubs can opt to be in the ERSJFA which becomes the official tier 6 feeder for only Dundee, Angus and part of Perthshire. 3. The WRSJFA becomes the official tier 6 feeder for all western traditional counties other than Dumfries, Kirkcudbright and Wigtown plus part of Stirlingshire, while SoS is feeder for D&G. Existing clubs can still play in the other setup but can't get licensed and progress from there. 4. Playoff for two automatic promotion places is EoS vs SoS and WRSJFA vs ERSJFA with the top licensed club in each eligible rather than only champions, if a third place opens up it is filled by application. Not ideal but compromises are about what's possible under the circumstances rather than what's ideal.

Possibly, won't dispute that incompetence is a strong possibility. Here's a tin foil hat conspiracy theory that has been floated on here previously. People have always interpreted "56,4513 N" to mean the same thing as 56.4513 N and that lines up with the Tay bridge, but there is another possible format of 56 degrees, 45 minutes and 13 seconds and if that was the originally intended meaning it means approximately 56.7522 N which lines up with the mouth of the River North Esk just north of Montrose.

What's more relevant than what we think is sensible is why the SFA Board would think there could be any confusion over this if Latitude 56,4513N is really meant to be automatically applicable in all circumstances and not just where team 42 thing is concerned in isolation?

We had already established that was where a boundary gets mentioned in the posts before that one.

So building on that, I think I am right in stating that the identity of the clubs to playoff against team 42 are up to the SFA in terms of what was agreed with the SPFL, and the PWG is a committee set up by the SFA board to deal with a specific issue that falls under the SFA's jurisdiction in that context. Is it possible that from the point of view of the SFA board, the HL-LL boundary is wherever they decide it is and is not rigidly fixed in the manner we have tended to assume on here?

Trying to understand the SFA posture on this and how there could possibly be confusion. As the rules stand am I right in thinking the Tay bridge line of latitude thing only revolves around which league the SPFL's team 42 gets relegated into and there is nothing explicit beyond that in SFA regulations about what the HL and LL cover geographically?

^^^prime example of why progress is difficult and meetings on this topic will go over the same ground over and over. Some people are so ingrained in their tribalism that they can hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time in an Orwellian doublethink sort of way. We vetoed the plan but at no point blocked its key component from happening, we have always been at war with Eurasia...

^^^sounds about right, unfortunately.

Spin it any way you want but the bottom line is that the self interest of the SJFA blazers is now costing clubs in the West cold hard cash. Statements of fact over what position the SFA was siding with in PWG meetings and over the EoS having blocked said position from being implemented do not equate to support for that position or blaming anybody for what happened.

This snippet is something Burnie_man should take note of. That's the situation in a nutshell. I suspect they are still referring to the ERSJFA given the HL feeder meetings stopped happening after the first one and the rest of what they are talking about refers to what's happening with the LL, but it's ambiguous. Just to be clear. It would be the SJFA officeholders that would be risking losing their blazers and in one case full-time job, if the SJFA doesn't join intact as a single entity.

Because that threatens the position of their officeholders. If each region starts doing its own thing there is no obvious need for a national association.

Which begged the question of whether 64 refers only to the LL feeders (16 SoS + 16 WRSJFA + 16 EoS + 16 ERSJFA) in this context or an HL feeder was factoring in somehow. We will have to wait for the leaks after the next PWG meeting to find out what the SFA's vision of the way ahead currently is on that.

They haven't, they've simply vetoed... You are directly contradicting yourself in the same sentence. By vetoing a change to the LL playoff format they blocked junior entry at that particular point in the proceedings, so it is patently absurd to state that at no point have they blocked the juniors. If something as simple as that in logic terms is contentious I can understand why the PWG meetings on this topic dragged on for months going over the same old ground.

Will ignore future follow ups from you. It's patently absurd to suggest that the EoS and LL have at no point blocked the juniors.

Where are you even going with this? If IM and RP bought the line they were being fed where is the "falsity" in stating that the SFA in the shape of IM and RP were siding with the SJFA's posture rather than that of the EoS? You are all over the place.

It suggests the EoS representative at that meeting was viewed by Ian Maxwell as having went along with something he didn't think he was agreeing to as Superbigal describes above probably because there was confusion between the different parties over how the HL:LL boundary entered the equation. What's truly comic from the minutes that appeared on here is that Ian Maxwell doesn't seem to have realised that the EoS could effectively veto it through having to agree with changes to the LL promotion playoff. The question that remains unclear is if Ian Maxwell was played by Tom Johnston, who understood full well all along that the EoS would do that and could then be blamed for the juniors not getting in, or alternatively whether Tom Johnston is so clueless about the procedures after many years of SFA involvement that he really thought there was something called a "board directive" that could force everything through.

This is bizarre. You've just confirmed what I wrote was correct with the "appeared to mirror the stance taken by good old TJ" bit.

^^^No idea what these two are referring to. My posts have been factual. The SFA officeholders were not siding with the EoS at PWG meetings last year and wanted ERSJFA entry at tier 6 complete with teams from north of the Tay. Read the minutes that were posted on here. It remains to be seen what their posture will be moving forward. As Burnie_man points out above it's not at all clear what's going to happen over the next few months.

If it's not, it's a bit like putting "No, I am your father" into a trailer for the Empire Strikes Back.

The SJFA tried to join as a collective last season so it remains to be seen who the SFA blames for it not happening. It's definitely not safe to assume that a new WoS is going to be approved and sanctioned by the SFA. They might keep trying to drive a square peg into a round hole with the same approach from last season, because although two east feeders is completely anathema to some people who are very close to the issue, it's probably not so obvious what the problem is with that when the issue is being discussed at SFA Board level. Getting the existing leagues on board in as straightfoward a way as possible is the simple fix. Not recently. It's like the licensing for EoS clubs is going to be ended by the SFA rumour that was being peddled on here last year. What some people with a particular agenda hoped would happen, but in reality was never particularly likely.