LongTimeLurker

Think it would make more sense to try to be geographical on the divisions. There might be a bit of an imbalance with something like this, but it wouldn't be drastic. Section A Blackburn Utd, Burntisland, Camelon, Crossgates Primrose, Dundonald Bluebell, Dunipace, Edinburgh Utd, Hill of Beath, Inverkeithing HS, Leith Ath, LTHV, St.Bernards, Tynecastle, Stirling Uni Res Section B Bonnyrigg Rose, Coldstream, Dalkeith Th, Easthouses Lily, Eyemouth Utd, Hawick RA, Herriot Watt, Haddington Ath, Musselburgh Ath, Ormiston, Peebles Rovers, Preston Ath, Tranent, Tweedmouth Rangers

Is there any evidence that's a dialogue rather than a monologue from Tom Johnston aimed at heading off EoS defections at the pass? If the EoS were talking about starting a west division if there was sufficient interest I suspect they would have checked it was OK to do so with the SFA first and only junior clubs that are actively in the process of getting licensed and move to one of the LL's feeders as part of that process are welcome in the SFA's pyramid. Things will be a lot clearer in a few months.

All the SJFA does in concrete terms is run the junior cup and a semi-pro level national team. There are associations of senior clubs within the SFA to run things like the Fife Cup or Arberdeenshire Shield. It's not completely impossible that the SJFA could continue in a similar sort of way in other words, but somewhat unlikely unless there is a major revamp to how the junior cup operates given it is one of the major contributing factors to fixture backlogs and tier 5 and 6 leagues are expected to wrap up by April.

St Bernards is the other name getting mentioned a lot.

Potential bad news for Sauchie. People tend to forget Clackmannanshire is a separate entity from Stirlingshire.

Being in the old Central League setup would have made sense back in the 1970s when it was viewed as the strongest of the junior regions, but why would they want to miss out on things like their natural local derby with Camelon nowadays? Think the only surprise is that it has taken this long for them to look east (assuming the info is correct).

15 junior applicants fits what's in the Edinburgh News if two amateur clubs have also applied and the possibility of two being relegated from the LL is factored: https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/sport/football/lower-leagues/substantial-number-of-teams-apply-for-eos-league-1-4717330 ...While admitting his committee have quite a process in establishing a new EoS set-up for next term, a shake-up that could see the number of clubs in the league rise from its current 13 to 32, Greenhorn says he has been blown away by the level of interest shown...

Tynieness is on the Bo'ness committee and has stated they didn't:

As a licensed club in the LL entering the Scottish Cup automatically you would have been looking at around 15K this season fom the SFA minimum from what I understand. Make it to midtable SPFL L2 and the various handouts probably total 60K or so. Good runs in the Scottish or League Cups make large financial windfalls like the one you would have got from the Tynecastle game possible as well.

Now confirmed to have been a wind up.

McKenna's a nasty piece of work as well. What he doesn't seem to grasp with the paranoid bit at the end is that the survey results were a break with tradition not a reinforcement of it.

If the above is legit and neither poster is the type to wind people up on something like this, it could be related to Linlithgow Rose coming out in favour of pyramid entry and a push to get into the SPFL in their local paper:

Here's why the SFA would need to take out a loan from the Bank of Scotland at the moment: https://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/teams/scotland/queen-s-park-agree-deal-to-sell-hampden-to-sfa-reports-1-4716180 Not sure what buying Hampden has to do with the pyramid. The pressure to open up the national divisions to entry from below came from the need to comply with UEFA statutes more than anything else.

The ball is in the SFA's court at the moment. The easy fix is all three regions in as is at tier 6 and slowly reconfigure from there and that would be in line with what would have happened if the SJFA had been on board at the outset according to the rhetoric at the time. The financial implications of 160 new clubs trying to get licensed over the next few years to secure automatic Scottish Cup entry is the other angle that makes the easy fix unlikely to be viewed favourably at Hampden, because from the SFA blazers' standpoint the SJFA were never expected to engage with the process and that could reasonably have been expected to prevent anything too radical from ever happening. If east region clubs are gung ho about licensing best to proceed with EoS applications before some new obstacle to progress can be dreamed up by the powers that be basically, but it might be difficult to persuade a club EGM of that right now, because on the surface it looks like all is rosy and 160 SJFA clubs will all be in the pyramid after next season. Time will tell.

Overlapping east feeders was the plan only a few years ago, if the SJFA had wanted to participate from the outset. I have no idea how you can state that so definitively and on what basis. The east region feeder scenario is actually the relatively easy bit for them given there are so many clubs showing a willingness to switch grades and do something different and the tier six feeder is happy to oblige. The bigger problem for the SFA is going to be what happens in the Highland League catchment given the tier five feeder in that part of the country doesn't appear to really want to be part of the pyramid and doesn't want to open itself up to new clubs and hence is likely to go apoplectic when the prospect of having to admit any newly licensed Tayside junior teams enters the discourse. Interesting times ahead with issues that are unlikely to be fixed neatly by 2019-20, which is when the mass migration scenario of central belt clubs able to get licensed might become the path of least resistance approach to break the logjam.

Suspect some/many/most of the 12 applications may even be withdrawn this season due to that and what will be sorted out next will be how an EoS merger with the ERSJFA is going to be engineered and under whose control. That's not straightforward if 16 Tayside clubs are really in the HL rather than LL catchment, so I suspect a mass migration of Fife & Lothians clubs to the EoS could still happen eventually. The optimal time to negotiate getting everything semi-pro under tier 5 to be under the auspices of the SJFA was when the LL was being launched. It's a bit late in the day to try to do it now.

You can always withdraw an application, so they could have put one in with the EGM deciding whether to proceed with it.

But he also said this: ..."The likelihood is that junior football will move into the pyramid system, and we will move to achieve that entry level and possibly higher. "Because if we're in there we want to do as well as we possibly can. Although we've no ambitions to do it, if we're going to be going in there we'll be doing as best as we can, and that means our facilities as well... so it's not quite a Whitburn and the superleagues scenario.

Will over 10,000 be showing up at a ground like Brockville or Love Street? Most of us can remember when that was the norm for the semis. It's still a big deal, but it's not as big a deal as it used to be.

Saw somebody on the junior subforum claiming last night that it's only Penicuik that definitely want to stay junior in Mid- and East Lothian terms.

The deadline for the application isn't until Sunday, so they could still put the form in prior to this EGM, which they may have had to give a certain amount of notice for under their constitution. What I find interesting is they tweeted this information out about an EGM after the survey results info from Tom Johnston went online (which they had sent out a retweet about).