LongTimeLurker

HIMARS started off with just 4 and numbers soon ballooned from there. A year ago very few people in the west thought the Ukrainians could win a war against Russia, so it was all about giving them the tools to make victory so pyrrhic that Vlad would think twice about moving any further. The latest decisions are a big step towards making it possible for Ukraine to try to retake Luhansk and Donetsk cities and the Crimean peninsula.

The problem with crying wolf like this if that quote is accurate: is that it makes it more difficult for Joe Biden to justify not sending ATACMS.

In reality a huge chunk of the country only had the Highland League up until the mid-1990s when road transport links with the central belt had improved sufficiently. There has only been something that could sensibly be described as a national part time division for around 30 years because there are limits to how far part-time players should sensibly have to travel for away games and even now it would be interesting to see what would happen if Brora or Wick established themselves as fixtures in SPFL L2. We are straying off topic though. How to pressure the LL into opening up the playoff bottleneck is the subject. Beyond giving them a hard time on twitter, a website driven campaign with petitions to Holyrood's sport minister might be worth a go if anyone is motivated enough.

It's probably going to be like what happened with the Patriot missile systems a few weeks back. Germany offers it to Poland after missile strikes to take out the Ukrainian electric grid, Poland says send it to Ukraine instead, Germany says nein danke to that but eventually the Americans do what needs to be done to get the Germans to also do it as well: Think the Germans have been hoping for stalemate and a Korean War style armistice along the current frontline so they can get back to buying Russian natural gas again because a lot of their manufacturing and chemicals industries need access to cheap Russian gas to be competitive globally but if other countries (mainly Poland, Baltics, Nordic contries, Turkey and the "Anglo-Saxons") are going to give the Ukrainians what they need to try to win outright they'll keep up appearances on being part of that effort, if they have no way to stop it.

Giving some of the clubs and officeholders involved in an LL context a hard time about it on twitter on a regular basis might be worth a go.

Was I the only one who looked at that draw and thought Aberdeen could be in trouble here because they won't fully grasp that they are facing what is arguably a League One quality squad that will be really up for it? Had the same feeling when I saw Auchinleck Talbot vs Hamilton Accies as the draw last season if Accies went swanning down to Ayrshire with the mentality that they just needed to show up because they are Hamilton Accies godammit, which by all accounts is basically what eventually happened. Will be interesting to see what happens with Falkirk in the next round because they will prepare for it properly after this result.

Think this hints at F-16s:

No idea why anyone would get worked up over something like that. Tier 6 and below is going to be colloquially referred to as "the juniors" for a while by a lot of people simply out of force of habit. When I was a wee kid in the early 70s I used to listen to older people talking about A division and B division quite a bit long after those had ceased to be the names that the SFL used. Beyond that he technically isn't actually wrong. Darvel rejoined the SJFA this season and that set the scene for this tweet last night from the guy that scored the goal against Darvel for Glentanar (an Aberdeen junior club) during a 10-1 defeat:

It will no doubt get treated that way by people who are unaware of the scale of financial doping involved with Darvel. Hopefully it provides some food for thought as to whether lower division SPFL, HL and LL clubs should enter so many rounds after the rest of the entrants. An open draw in the earlier rounds to come up with 20 clubs to face the top tier in the round of 32 would make for a more interesting competition.

Baaaaaaaaaaah humbug wail our parsimonious friends from the NE. The most hilarious part of all this is they no doubt don't realise along with most people that only pay attention to the top tier that this Darvel team is probably stronger than the Stenhousemuir one that knocked them out 28 years ago.

Think it's normal to have a break point in pyramid terms revolving around that difference where entry by application rather than promotion is very much possible (e.g. by Phoenix clubs with a suitable ground and significant following). In England, it's only Steps 1-6 from the Nationwide Conference down that are fully in the pyramid in terms of the principle of progression: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_football_league_system Then the decision is whether to rigidly cap numbers and force bottom placed clubs out on a regular basis so they can be replaced by suitable applicants and/or top clubs in feeder leagues that do have the necessary facilities, have finished near the top of their division and want to progress. Don't think there's much appetite to kick clubs out into amateur leagues in a Scottish context, so ways need to be found to keep lowest divisions functioning sensibly even when there aren't bang on 16 clubs. Easy enough to do with conferences (see what the EoS did) without risking having the fixture secretary suffer a stroke.

This might focus minds in Berlin if accurate:

On desktops "My Team" in your profile shows up as Bonnyrigg Rose and is visible to other users. You probably made a mistake with the pull-down menu when you first registered. This isn't an issue on phones so that might be why you never noticed this.

Looks like the German SPD leadership really can't come to terms with the idea of having German panzers rampaging across the Ukrainian steppe again even when it is not the Wehrmacht that's going to be doing the rampaging this time. Don't mention the war I did once but I think I got away with it. Seeing a few people suggesting that the Ukrainians may receive these and that it could help them go after the Kerch Bridge again: The Russians were getting paranoid about it late last year apparently: and that might explain why Vlad feels a need to strengthen Moscow's air defences: Seems a bit too mental in escalatory terms to actually happen though. Guess it could also be about the long range drones the Ukrainians claim to be developing.

Hopefully this is more accurate than the Daily Mail and the Apache helicopters:

Which local team that would be is maybe the interesting part. The Shire or Stenny would be prime candidates if a higher level than the EoS is involved.

He was signed with Stenhousemuir when they were last in the 3rd tier so that probably helps.

My grandfather (born 1902) used to compare anyone who was getting a bit rotund to Rab Hall.

The BUs got into the LL on a ppg basis with no playoff involved after COVID had started. In the minds of some Linlithgow Rose fans this means something but nobody else remembers or cares.

Newtown Park still had a seated stand until relatively recently that dated back to the SFL days in the 1920s that included a season in the old First Division. Would have been easier to maintain if Bo'ness had received all the cash injections clubs like Cowdenbeath enjoyed over the decades from pools money, SFA, SFL and SPFL membership, but you still managed to lose your ground to stock car racing promoters despite that.

It would most likely have to be his inner circles in a similar manner to how Khrushchev was ousted. There's a reason he got them all to say they supported his invasion special military operation on live television before it happened.

Should probably know better than to engage but B teams were very much part of the conversation when the SPL-SFL merger negotiations were underway and it wasn't just the Old Firm that were pushing for it. Rod Petrie was a big fan of the idea when he was still with Hibs: https://www.hibs.net/showthread.php?360734-Spfl-3&p=7223402&viewfull=1#post7223402

This seems a bit farfetched: