LongTimeLurker

The Ukrainians appear to have launched a significant counteroffensive aimed towards the Nova Kakhovka hydroeletric dam over the Dniepr near Kherson where Crimea used to get its water supply for agriculture from pre-2014. Probably a case of trying to take advantage of the strong Russian focus on the Donbas and/or trying to divert pressure from it by going after the area where the 50 year old T62 tanks were reported as being deployed: ^^^this guy's daily summary is usually worth a quick read for balanced takes with a pro-Ukrainian spin on what is happening

Think there's not much doubt Darvel wanted it so it's more Auchinleck Talbot that people are skeptical about on actually wanting to progress. Clydebank and Kilwinning are also clearly gung ho so you could argue most of the WoS's top 5 have their focus fixed on trying to make it to the SPFL now rather than chasing TJ's Holy Grail. Pollok seem to have soured on the SJFA this season after what happened with the Irvine Vics game. I don't remember what unfolded with Tranent but worth bearing in mind that although the people who post on here (including Tynieness at the time) tended to be in favour, Bo'ness United's membership initially rejected the move to the EoS at a general meeting and the committee (minus Tynieness by that point) only did a U-turn at the very last minute along with Linlithgow Rose and Broxburn's (?) when they realised they were going to be left in a drastically weakened east superleague. Two years later a licence was secured along with promotion to the LL so that initial reluctance didn't seem to lead to a desire to stick to the EoS premier. Even Bonnyrigg Rose leaving the east region was not without significant controversy AFAIR.

Think there will be a few LL clubs that will be happier to have Tranent visiting rather than Darvel for that reason. Darvel would have been another EK type club. Lots of money getting pumped in but not much in the way of a support. Would be a different story with Talbot, Clydebank or Pollok obviously.

Tranent is as much a mining village with a strong junior football tradition as Auchinleck is, so that's a bizarre comment.

^^^not grasping the difference between somebody thinking something will happen and wanting it to happen is usually a sign of a low IQ.

Not necessarily if the rules on the playoff were changed to two out of three. It will take at least five years for there to be a clear trend on the EoS vs WoS thing that appears to fixate some people. Personally think the west will tend to dominate in the years ahead as the pool of very strong tier 6 clubs in the east looks shallower to me but not really that fussed either way on what I actually want to happen. Hopefully the pro/rel format will be changed well before five years but turkeys and Christmas etc. The stuff about Darvel players being away on a stag do is mindboggling and would be reminiscent of Montrose vs Brora, if it wasn't for the fact that the rich sugar daddy's public statements in this case have been all about going for it where eventual SPFL membership is concerned rather than being happy to just win the local regional league.

Did they think a game against Tranent was a formality or did they just not give a flying one about whether they went up or not?

Time for a steward's inquiry if that's how many Fauldhoose are losing by to Whitburn?

All for naught with Tranent winning. Only two go up.

They've won. Game over now. Also bad news for Benburb and Bo'ness Athletic.

Happy to see Tranent win this given they are a club with a fair sized support rather than a rich guy's vanity project, but it's ridiculous that they aren't both being promoted.

Kincardineshire hasn't completely gone away. There are still a couple of aspects of administration revolving around land registration and lord-lieutenancies where the old county boundaries are still used: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kincardineshire

It's basically the West of Scotland Cup (continuing) so not quite the SJC or SCC depending on what you regard as being the main cup competition at the moment but still a significant piece of silverware.

Team with 11 players wins 3-0 has always been the norm for this AFAIA. Happens more often in amateur leagues but this isn't some unknown scenario that has never happened before.

This might be the way they do it: Thread that's worth a read from somebody who I suspect probably has more concept of what's happening than Kate Adie would if she were reporting off a teleprompter from Bakhmut:

Twitter and youtube have changed everything in media terms. You can find people like the Ukrainian dude in the clip above who actually know what they are talking about to keep you informed now rather than listening to some talking head on the BBC who basically only got the job because they had a posh Oxbridge accent and were the sort of person the Beeb top brass were comfortable having around at office Christmas parties, etc.

That happened yesterday at a location called the Mir hotel from a youtube clip I watched last night. One of two remaining bridges from Lysychansk was also blown up yesterday apparently: Find this guy is reasonably balanced in terms of outlining the setbacks as well as the victories for his side.

The situation around Popasna is reported to have stabilised a bit. What the Ukrainians do at Severodonetsk and Lysychansk is likely to be shaped by how likely imminent encirclement is from that direction. Using their hold on a sliver of land in Luhansk oblast as bait to have the Russians lose lots of their remaining armour and best trained personnel going after strong defensive positions is the ideal scenario from a Ukrainian standpoint at this point. The Ukrainians are still in a holding pattern to a certain extent waiting to be ready to counterattack in a major way in July or August with newly trained reserves who will be equipped with all sorts of goodies supplied by NATO.

^^^ A match is played by two teams, each with a maximum of eleven players; one must be the goalkeeper. A match may not start or continue if either team has fewer than seven players. If a team has fewer than seven players because one or more players has deliberately left the field of play, the referee is not obliged to stop play and the advantage may be played, but the match must not resume after the ball has gone out of play if a team does not have the minimum number of seven players. If the competition rules state that all players and substitutes must be named before kick-off and a team starts a match with fewer than eleven players, only the players and substitutes named on the team list may take part in the match upon their arrival.

Big once 100% confirmed: but has to be frustrating for the Ukrainians that these shipments only happen incremently. If these had been supplied at the very outset what difference would that have made in Kherson and Mariupol? 500 km isn't enough range to hit Moscow from Kharkiv but it potentially brings all of Crimea in range including the Kerch bridge. Hence the warnings from Lavrov.

The Vics did have enough players there to start the game so at the end of the day it wasn't an outright failure to fulfil a fixture. I suspect the outcome would have been different on extra sanctions if there were only six players there and the game couldn't be started according to the rules of the game.

Think it goes back to when the league was launched and is still in their constitution. The HL were supposed to be fixed at 16 as well according to the SFA but had more leverage on the issue at the time as a pre-existing league when they adopted a bit of a take us all or we're no daein it approach to the pyramid.

Just delays the inevitable for clubs like Hawick Royal Albert by a season or two so difficult to see what was achieved in the larger scheme of things by going for a lopsided 16-18-18-8 format if Darvel win or 16-16-18-9 if they lose rather than something a bit more rational such as 16-16-14-14 or 16-16-14-13 with double relegations where justified by what happens out on the park. After another two seasons almost all of this season's Conference X will probably have been promoted to higher divisions and it will mainly be "CURRENT clubs" that you were supposedly trying to protect that will be left stuck with the pygmy division that you chose to create. In other words, what happened on that was almost as bright in terms of strategic thinking as opposing Maxwell and Petrie's Option Z which would have resulted in an east tier 5 with access to the Club 42 playoff because you all pure hated the juniors so you wound up instead with the ongoing playoff bottleneck to the LL that could make promotions out of the EoS Premier few and far between in the years ahead.

How would the LL get taken over when the colt teams don't have voting rights and > 16 would be needed to outnumber the others? Think that's a wild extrapolation from where things are right now. The idea of going to 19 to accomodate Hearts B was rejected by a majority of member clubs even before Cowdenbeath replaced VoL. What's surprising is why the OF would want to force Hearts in as well. Think there may be some missing details on that angle but if it's a case of three or nane sounds like there's a good chance that the colt team experiment is about to be booted out into the long grass.

When Whitburn & Co were trying to join the WoS ISTR some of the usual suspects were posting on here about how they could enter the EoS at tier 7 in rejigged conferences in 2021-22 while moving to the WoS would wind up being a case of entering at tier 9 in 2022-23 after a season in the Division 4 as will be the case with Harthill Royal. The existing EoS members subsequently chose to make life more awkward for the last batch of east region entrants than they needed to by setting up Conference X instead. Can understand why the Edinburgh College guy that posted recently might be upset about that decision because his club wound up being collateral damage to a certain extent without having played any part in the earlier EoS vs east region blazer politics.