LongTimeLurker

Would be interesting to know for sure what was decided on where Dalbeattie would go, but strongly suspect it's only Gretna in D&G that might get into the EoS again given they never played in the SoS previously. Which local association clubs are a member of is probably the key factor.

Hope you live a lot longer than that comment implies.

^^^lacks the self-awareness to realise he is one of the frontrunners himself

So that makes it all OK then? Get a grip. He is criminally responsible for her death and that means a lengthy jail sentence regardless of whether he intended to murder her.

They were accepted for deferred entry in 19-20. That never seems to have been officially announced as having been cancelled but doesn't seem to be happening now given the west region clubs believe they are in the pyramid next season.

See what you mean. Interesting retweet by the official twitter account of next season's EoS premier teams with WW listed on it and the cartoon clip is a bit ambiguous but could be interpreted as saying farewell to the LL.

If a newly licensed EoS club gets promoted through the playoff, Dalbeattie would be relegated if Cove win promotion, but could reapply for the Selkirk vacancy. That's the scenario that almost certainly relegates Whitehill Welfare, because odds on Dalbeattie gets voted back in.

Basically agree with this. The only contentious issues lumbering over the horizon might be what happens to Bonnyton Thistle and whether a west junior club could ever try to use the SoS as a shortcut to the LL.

I've always been skeptical that the visions of Johnson and Abrams are anything like as disconnected as the irate fanboys make out. Both directors and Disney were trying to use the original characters sparingly as a way to draw fans in and get them enthused about the new generation characters, so they could keep making big budget films about the latter until the end of time. The problem was how that was executed in TFA more than anything else, because although the new characters were OK they were not compelling enough to sustain a big budget trilogy at original trilogy levels of excitement. It wasn't just Johnson that subverted expectations on where the story would go. What the fanboys neglect to consider is that Luke was stuck on an island for no obvious reason and reduced to a brief cameo by Abrams on TFA because of Mark Hamill's limited acting abilities more than anything else. Johnson's solution on that was to get him to be himself as a bitter cranky old man instead of the whiny kid of the original trilogy and he also stuck Leia in a coma rather than a slave costume for similar reasons. Both directors couldn't do the extended universe storylines the obsessive portion of the fanbase were expecting but the general audience was largely oblivious about, because Harrison Ford simply wasn't interested in anything more than a brief cameo role to be killed off and Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher were incapable of doing the acting that would have been required.

But would be driven by the same self-preservation instinct. We'll see what happens on licensing. Think the fear was more over 160 present and recent junior clubs all getting licensed at once rather than having a few promotion challengers trying to get into the LL doing it given the floodlight thing will throttle the potential numbers back considerably. Time will tell basically.

Basically agree but loyalist rather than unionist would probably have been better phrasing. Nothing inherently wrong with being unionist or a constitutional nationalist. Both are legitimate political aspirations. All too predictable that certain cranks on here would try to pigeonhole you based on that comment. Have wound up being in contact with various distant relatives from that part of the world in recent years after getting into genealogy in a big way, and couldn't help noticing that they always refer to the city as Derry despite being on the red, white and blue side of things. It seems to only really be an issue in official contexts.

Part of what is alleged to be involved with pyramid entry is changes to when the season ends and discipline procedures etc, so it's not clear if that all happens why there shouldn't be a combined grade for all semi-pro teams outside the PGB level and what relevance the previous procedures used by the SJFA have at that point.

...possibly because they would be happy to shuffle off the EoS and SoS into the SJFA.

...and the sort of thing that could be negotiated for starting after an initial status quo trial period. The problem in part is that end game means people losing their blazers.

It's Scotland things don't need to fully make sense. That's why we have Berwick in the SPFL and have no mechanism available to relegate Fort William even after a goal difference of over -200.

Sometimes how it gets handled with outlets like the BBC is that the first official mention of the city will be as Londonderry then the journalist switches to using Derry colloquially, so it isn't necessarily an obsessive use of one over the other. This only became an issue in the last few decades after all and further back nobody on the Unionist side of things would have thought twice about being called something like the Apprentice Boys of Derry.

If it's only a one year trial as a stop gap to a permanent solution that addresses the Tay boundary and geographical overlap, and as things stand only Girvan have a license as an SJFA member in the LL catchment, and there is talk of tightening up further on licensing, people who are only really interested in the SPFL level are probably genuinely wondering what exactly all the fuss is over.

Stroke city is one way used to avoid taking sides on that.

Conventional crude oil production peaked around a decade ago and it's only fracking in the United States that's keeping oil production on a plateau in production terms, but that's expensive to do so the higher oil price needed to keep supply marginally outpacing demand is making it a lot easier for renewables to compete than it used to be. The interesting thing to watch at the moment is what happens over the next decade now that solar and wind energy have hit grid parity and the electric car is becoming much more mainstream. China is very much leading the way on that and may have effectively already peaked in terms of coal production much earlier than anticipated in a David Rutledge sort of way. The only remaining technological problem that's standing in the way of a large scale transition away from fossil fuels is how to achieve energy storage in a cost effective way for when the sun isn't shining, the wind isn't blowing etc in the absence of the mountainous terrain and high rainfall needed for Norwegian style pump-storage hydro. The large scale batteries that Elon Musk has come up with look like more of a stop gap measure than the final answer. Until that gets fixed, increasingly inexpensive renewables backed up by natural gas power stations will probably be the order of the day, but it should get sorted out eventually. There's no reason to be deeply pessimistic about the future, basically. There are challenges ahead but they are not insurmountable.

Think he's been involved with St Andrews United in a goalkeeper coach capacity in the not too distant past and he seems to be close to Tayport, so he could easily have contacts in both camps. Hopefully there won't be two warring camps in the not too distant future and the sensible thing will happen where an EoS and ERSJFA merger is concerned.

Floodlights was the obvious first step on that. Several hundred covered seats will probably be next, if they want to be able whittle down the numbers that can ever hope to do it and get rid of a few that are already in.

Think the playoff for team 42 can only be changed with the agreement of the SPFL and that goes back to the negotiations that happened to merge the SFL and SPL. There have been claims the same sort of arrangement applied to the playoff to get into the LL based on an annexe to the LL constitution, which stated that the LL, SFA, EoS and SoS all had to sign off on changes to the playoff format. If the SFA can force a change it means that is not actually the case and that the SFA can dictate what happens lower down the pyramid. This might go back to what was agreed when the LL was formed. Time will tell, basically.

Will be interesting to hear how they can force it through. It may be related to the pyramid and the identification of the team to play team 42 being something that is under the SFA's direct control, but that's far from clear where the SFA's online constitution is concerned. Personally think it's good to see the logjam being broken so a genuine pyramid for all semi-pro and pro clubs can be formed and don't see the parallel divisions in the east and the Tayside boundary between the LL and HL as being anything like as critical as they were being made out to be by some on here.

If there has been a problem with GoT actors it's more that HBO had to cut back the number of episodes per season to keep costs under control because of the fees per episode that the major cast members had been able to negotiate for themselves along the way. Everything is a bit too rushed now. As for there being some relatively weak acting performances it goes with the territory with a series like this and never did The Sopranos any harm. When many of the key casting decisions were being made the roles were nothing like as sought after as they became a few seasons in.

spfl or slfl? could see that one coming