LongTimeLurker

Do the existing members not get a vote on whether new clubs get in? Think the league management can only provide recommendations on that. By the upcoming AGM there will be a former junior majority in place with full voting rights and if they are not collectively keen on having a setup like Syngenta get in because they don't have a properly enclosed ground along the lines of Carmuirs Park that vote might not go the way some on here assume it will. The EoS isn't struggling for numbers any more, so they can actually afford to apply the regulations without running the risk of folding through a lack of numbers in a year or two as was the case when Tweedmouth got in.

The silence from the SFA has been deafening. Let's not forget that having more clubs get licensed cuts into the existing full member's subsidy handouts so there could have been pressure behind the scenes to go slow on this whole pyramid thing that is not showing up in the PWG minutes. Possibly more that both have no real interest in pushing it forward unless they have to so that part has been parked for now until the LL feeder angle gets sorted?

It's open again, so should be possible to post that superbigal.

Tom Johnston is very insistent that he is the SJFA's representative and that the negotiation on the pyramid is taking place only through the SJFA and not through the three regions if you read the PWG minutes that have been on here.

Will definitely be interesting to find out why given the next few days are pivotal to what is going to unfold over the next few seasons.

Think you are getting that backwards. The only party that really cares about the timeline on entry being 2019-20 is the SJFA who provided a mandate to TJ at their last AGM to pursue entry as a complete association with the three superleagues all entering at tier 6. It actually very much suits the agenda of the EoS for there to be no fixed timeline and for it to happen one region at a time, because they are the ones that most want the west to be treated differently from the east as they want to still be the only tier 6 feeder in the east south of the Tay. Option B on ERSJFA reconstruction would be a spectacular own goal in terms of them getting in at tier 6, because if they can't sustain a superleague across the entire east region it's reasonable for other groups on the PWG like the EoS to insist that they belong at a lower tier. Option A is only marginally more sensible for their negotiating posture because in a similar manner to option B it caters to a split at the Tay making it considerably easier for other parties like the EoS and LL to insist that the north section of the ERSJFA has to feed into the HL.

Don't think that's accurate about the North region. That one should be a lot of easier to do than the East region, if the HL and NRSJFA both want to get it done, because there is no overlap with a pre-existing tier 6 feeder. Hasn't Ian Maxwell been told that the NRSJFA really don't care about the pyramid, which is why it is only a subgroup of the PWG that is meeting at this point? If the three regions don't all need to join at the same time why would there be a huge push to get the ERSJFA in for next season before the issue of the boundary between the HL and LL can be addressed? It should be easy to get the WRSJFA in first and then sort out the other two later, but that isn't what Tom Johnston is doing at the PWG meetings if the minutes that have appeared on here are to be believed. He definitely seems to be pushing for a complete SJFA entry.

Think the Strollers thing will be what tipped the balance as they won't want to wind up being the EK Thistle to the newly emerging EKFC type club. Beyond that the Linlithgow Thistle amateurs as BUJFC thing looks embarrassing for the ERSJFA more than anything else at this point as it looks like something driven by complete desperation that borders on Walter Mitty sort of territory. They needed the real Bo'ness United to fail to make next season's EoS premier for that to have any chance of working, but that's looking unlikely now after the recent run of good form.

True but the SoS primarily caters to a large and relatively remote area that other leagues for the most part (yes I know about Kello) don't have a presence in and probably have no huge desire to start traveling to. They have their niche in other words and most seasons won't have a licensed champion making their tier 6 status a non-issue. Meanwhile the problem the SJFA has is that the North region don't seem to care about being in the pyramid, and the East region may be about to vote in a return to a three way district feeder format that is clearly better suited for feeding into the EoS rather than the LL. At that point how does Tom Johnston maintain the posture that all three regions need to join at the same time at tier 6 when it's only really the West region that both wants to and deserves to?

...and Coupar Angus look like prime candidates for going into abeyance. My only question would be how Tom Johnston could keep a straight face in PWG meetings claiming the ERSJFA can still be a credible tier 6 feeder for the LL if they go for option b?

So a bit like what Spartans had a few seasons back in other words.

The reconstruction they have in mind needs 40 clubs to work sensibly and they are unlikely to have that many, so clubs that see that as the only viable way ahead for the ERSJFA should seriously consider putting an application for EoS entry in before the deadline on the 31st.

Sounds like Bonnybridge?

Once the SJFA committed to pyramid entry there was nothing stopping a club like Cumnock from doing this.

They were not bad most of the time until 24/7 cable TV news came on the scene and they moved away from the old school Radio Four and World Service type approach that stuck to the known facts delivered in a very dry sort of way to being just another CNN style channel that appeals to visceral level emotions with loaded language, simplistic good guy and bad guy analyses of highly complex problems like Syria, human interest angles pushed to the forefront and narcissistic interviewers like Jeremy Paxman theatrically hectoring people rather than treating them with respect and engaging intellectually to drive ratings.

At one point in the minutes Ian Maxwell seems to be threatening to impose a solution if there is a vote to stall the process for the "wrong reasons". We'll find out soon if he is bluffing, if as seems highly likely from those minutes the next PWG meeting reaches an impasse.

These are the parts that jump out of the page for me: Ian Maxwell is clearly on Tom Johnston's side on most of this, so a lot depends on what the SFA constitution actually says should happen after a "Board directive". A clearer picture might also emerge if we knew what the EoSFA wants to change in the SFA's Articles.

Flipping it over the other way. West Belfast voted 26% leave. The Unionist vote there is around 13% on a good day. It wasn't a tribal head count.

You do realise that I was pointing out that all of these things are going to have to be done anyway this century because easily exploitable fossil fuels are fast being used up leaving only the truly mental options that won't be able to compete economically with renewables?

You no doubt think you are being very clever with that, but one of the problems with academic research is that people are very much siloed in their own fields, so the geologists and engineers that tend to get most worked up about peak fossil fuels seldom interact with the climate scientists who get worked up about global warming. The former tend to think that the latter have a wildly optimistic view of how much fossil fuel is actually still available to mess up the climate. As an entree, try checking out this public lecture from Prof. David Rutledge of Caltech on peak coal:

Any number of people who are more scared by the implications of peak oil than by those of global warming. Read up on the subject. Fracking provided some leeway for technology on renewables and batteries to get to where it will need to be later this century.

One of these days they might get someone credible on who can explain that fossil fuels are a finite resource and that a large portion of the most easily exploitable reserves are already gone. The catastrophic climate change narrative makes a virtue out of a necessity where the switch to renewables is concerned. Planet Earth isn't a cornucopia and fracking has only delayed the downward portion of the Hubbert curve on crude oil, which will be when the fun and games really start in terms of the global economy. I guess we have moved onto this topic, because hurtling headlong towards a no deal Brexit is too depressing, but in some ways it's an exercise in rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. On the bright side Scotland should do OK down the road, if electrical output from tidal power from the Pentland Firth was ever hooked up effectively to pump-storage hydro in the Great Glen.

That probably all depends on LL2 happening, because it won't happen if the SoS league is still at tier 6.

Only if all of the SFA, SPFL, HL and LL first agree. Suspect that might happen eventually, but it clearly hasn't happened yet, which means that not all of the ERSJFA is eligible for future LL entry as things stand.

What makes you think the SFA cares enough about this issue to do that? They recently added floodlights to entry level licensing to severely limit the number of clubs that can get licensed.