LongTimeLurker

OK, see now that you had already figured out it was Fauldhouse and Syngenta.

Given the NCL is still in the pyramid they will probably stick with Fort William. Ben Nevis isn't going anywhere basically.

Think that's two fewer than last season once you factor in Harthill. Fauldhouse and Pumpherston maybe?

Because it was a poster on P&B who was responsible for the SJFA's pyramid proposal rather than the SJFA's COO, Alex McDowall: Successful Scottish Junior Football Association AGM today. Biggest thing to go through was the opening of the Scottish Junior Cup to any team tier 5 and below who wish to enter. It’s about small steps and I don’t expect a major influx from teams straight away but my plan includes an up to £80,000 prize pot with payouts to last 16 possibly 32. There is no denying that the association has struggled to move forward but hopefully this is the first step moving on. We’ve said it continuously that we are more than willing to work with other associations at our level if they are. Another that was in my report to our members is the proposal put forward to the pyramid working group of the SFA, we have proposed a new set up at tier 5 sitting alongside the highland league and lowland league. We feel the timing is right for such a move and again would be happy working with the others roundabout us. We aim to fill a 16 team league with licensed clubs from the midlands league, the West of Scotland Football League and the East of Scotland league. At the top end of it all depends on SPFL clubs changing there format, at the bottom end if the three leagues are in the winners if licensed automatically go up and the bottom three down, the fourth bottom of central league will play in a playoff with all three leagues second placed teams if licensed for the fourth promotion/relegation place. A proper way for promotion and relegation. Congratulations also go to Norman McKay, Bobby McNamara, Gordon Ronney and Felix McKenna on gaining life membership of the association, your service to the Scottish Junior FA is greatly appreciated. Felix McKenna also received an honorary Vice President certificate. Alex McDowall Chief Operating Officer Scottish Junior FA

Just seen this from Jimmy Shaker on FN: DON’T LET THE DOOR HIT YOU ON THE :censored: ON THE WAY OUT. THE END. I assume the appeal failed?

Option Z came from the president of the SFA. People can judge for themselves whether the SFA president is worth taking seriously in the context of the PWG and building a pyramid structure within Scottish football and whether the SFA president is likely to have done that without running it past the SPFL first given both those organisations (plus the SJFA at the time) are based at Hampden making it easy to have a quick chat over a cup of tea. There is also usually some overlap on who is on the SFA and SPFL boards so the left hand knows what the right hand is doing in Scottish football terns.

Any stakeholder pushing a proposal would need to get everybody but the SLFL on board and the SFA board engaged enough to care about the outcome to the extent they keep pushing it very hard like they did with the Tay Bridge boundary angle for reasons that are still far from obvious. Challenging but so was getting the Club 42 playoff off the ground in the first place and that happened because Alan McRae from Cove Rangers knew how to navigate the blazer politics involved. The SLFL has arguably been doing its best to antagonise most of the other groups involved (maybe not the SHFL so much) along with its three feeders in recent times so how to fix tier 5 could be very much on the agenda during the upcoming pyramid review through the PWG. Colt teams and what to do with them if Hibs, Motherwell (as rumoured) and others decide they want in on it as well is the angle the SFA and full-time SPFL clubs might care about enough in a way that places a complete revamp of the LL that opens up tier 5 to many more central belt clubs high on their to do list. The SJFA didn't address that angle with what they proposed because they are clearly only thinking about what their own clubs would want (e.g. Midlands League no longer feeding into the SHFL, SLFL promotion bottleck bypassed for WoS teams with a structure that keeps the SJC there even at tier 5). Anything with a chance of happening needs to give most of the stakeholders something they want rather than just one of them, so seriously doubt that's happening but somebody in possession of a reasonable IQ might come up with something with deeper thinking behind it than that.

Maybe worth bearing in mind his time at Cowdenbeath would have been at Championship and League One level rather than the Lowland League unless I'm mistaken about the seasons involved.

To sum up, Rod Petrie is the president of the SFA, but there's a small clique of posters on P&B that were arrogantly convinced they knew more about the inner workings of Scottish football than he did and falsely tried to claim on here that the Tay Bridge boundary was applicable beyond the Club 42 playoff rule when it quite simply wasn't. Luncarty, Letham, Scone and Tayport all were able to wind up on the wrong side of the supposed line because it only ever applied as a written rule in the narrow context of where Club 42 got relegated to. Even after the Tay Bridge boundary they used to harp on about obsessively was completely removed from the rulebook due to pressure on the LL from the SFA and the SPFL they still seem to think they can childishly dismiss a plan the top SFA officeholder previously proposed through the PWG as a "brain fart" or "fever dream" if it doesn't neatly fit their own preferred EoS-centric narrative about the pyramid. A third tier 5 was placed on the agenda by the top SFA officeholders only a little over two years back so if there are stakeholders in the pyramid that think that's the better way ahead they are perfectly within their rights to make proposals on that subject through the PWG. If enough of the other stakeholders agree with them pressure can be brought to bear by the SFA as it was over the Club 42 rule because the tail doesn't always get to wag the dog. The SFA can sometimes find the leverage it needs to push something through.

There's going to be a review of the pyramid through the PWG because of what the SFA had to promise LL clubs to get Hearts B shoehorned into the LL this season. Although the SFA consistently sided with the SJFA rather than the EoS in a PWG context once Petrie and Maxwell were running the show, I seriously doubt that will happen with this latest SJFA plan. The better approach to campaign for a third tier 5 league would probably be for the WoS to push for tier 5 status and access for its champion to the Club 42 playoffs.

That's what Option Z revolved around with Tayside falling under LL East. The EoS and LL were opposed, but all the other stakeholders apparently were on board including the SPFL. Where it gets murky is that apparently the SFA were led to believe by the LL board that the LL would be OK with it but this subsequently turned out not to be the case when it went to the clubs at an LL general meeting.

The two top officeholders of the SFA, who later used the rule changes required for colt teams to enter the LL to force the LL to agree to the SPFL's Angus club driven agenda on the Tay Bridge boundary, which was also part of what Option Z was all about.

^^^more map of Luncarty with a line through it level stuff.

You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. Option Z came from Rod Petrie and Ian Maxwell of the SFA rather than Tom Johnston.

Chat seems to be that it is a Ukrainian reconnaisance drone modified to act in kamikaze mode.

It is what this whole conflict revolves around though to a large extent. People don't seem to grasp that the real reason we are moving towards renewables and technology like heat pumps in the 21st century is that cheap easily exploted fossil fuels are largely tapped out over 200 years on from the invention of the steam engine. Added to that, renewables technology can't fully replace fossil fuels yet in the absence of scalable solutions on storage but instead usually still has to be backed up by them with gas being the easiest way to do that. Those factors combined mean that there isn't excess production capacity available to easily eliminate Russia from the market if countries like the UK and Netherlands refuse to develop or continue to exploit their onshore natural gas resources to keep environmentalists happy. Having much of the EU going mental on wind turbines before the storage issue is resolved rather than using nuclear for baseload hands a huge amount of leverage to people like Vlad who control large sources of natural gas supply and gets them thinking about reordering the international order in ways that suit themselves rather than the West.

Russian oil refinery mysteriously catches fire after drone spotted in the sky: and looks like Russia may finally take a large chunk of what's left of Ukrainian controlled Luhansk oblast with a pincer movement that's finally small enough to be doable for them:

That's what always gets posted on here but Option Z being actively discussed through the PWG strongly suggests otherwise.

More predictable but still need storage to match supply with demand.

Renewables need gas to back them up given the lack of large scale storage across most of Europe for when the wind stops blowing and sun stops shining (Norway's pump-storage hydro would be the most obvious exception) so it's not that simple. Germany in particular needed vast quantities of cheap Russian gas to reliably back up all their wind turbines after foolishly moving away from having nuclear as stable baseload.

Armadale Thistle (his hometown club) is what has been mentioned but don't think it has been officially announced.

Several of their elected officials have actively collaborated with the Russian occupation forces since the war started.

The leagues involved need to cooperate on freeing up the Saturday fixture dates though and AFAIA HibeeJibee does the fixtures for both the LL and EoS and definitely wasn't doing that for the seven EoS clubs that entered last season.

Meanwhile there's enough shale gas under Lancashire and to a lesser extent Scotland's central belt to easily eliminate the need for the UK to import LNG for a few decades, but we've got to keep Greta & Co happy so we pay extra to have the fracking done in Texas instead...

Maybe HIMARS has entered the picture?