LongTimeLurker

This is going to be as farcical as Edusport was but at least you can say that on here now without receiving lots of earnest replies about how all clubs are equally valid or whatever.

...or doing so opens up an avenue for appeal that may or may not have interesting implications.

^^^PGB deals with tier 5 and up so this seems unlikely. There is a non-professional game board where tier 6 and below are represented: https://www.scottishfa.co.uk/scottish-fa/organisation/strategy-structure/who-we-are/board-committees/

Think they've wised up a bit after columns of tanks were caught on camera driving straight through their border posts on their way to cities like Kiev, Kherson and Melitopol on the first day of the war. Wouldn't be surprised if Transnistria gets dealt with before this is all over but the Ukrainians have way too much on their plate in the Donbas right now to be in a position to even think about opening up a new front.

Whoever is operating that crane obviously didn't get the memo.

Think the Khmer Rouge were "successful agrarian reformers" at one point shortly after Year Zero according to Noam. Like that other fossil from the Vietnam era Pilger, he's a one trick pony intellectually because all he basically ever does is point out the double standards of the West. That's a useful counter-balance most of the time but when the side the West is opposed to genuinely does turn out to be up to no good and is clearly very much the party in the wrong he's lost at sea because his usual routine no longer works.

It's Maronite Christian, Sunni and Shia on that. Think they do have quite lively elections because the Maronites are split on whether to align with Sunni or Shia parties.

From Voice of Reason's old posts it looks like he is probably linked to Preston Athletic in some way who along with Spartans and Threave Rovers were heavily involved with the process of forming the LL as I think they were the first EoS and SoS clubs to get licensed. Don't doubt something like this may have been said at some point in meetings but that's very different from something being voted on by LL clubs at a general meeting after that league had been constituted. I think it's quite telling that people who followed this topic closely over the years don't remember anything being said publicly about this at the time. I certainly don't. If west junior clubs had known that there was a 16 club west division to potentially be filled at tier 5 it probably would have been a lot easier to turn the various expressions of interest on surveys from clubs like Clydebank into applications. Can remember accusations from well-connected Clydebank fans on here that Spartans were the ones primarily running the show and had treated junior clubs as an afterthought.

Probably an area that the Ukrainian military withdrew from but the Russians haven't tried to actively control yet because it is well away from their main supply lines. What's interesting about this latest Ukrainian advance from Kharkiv is mainly whether it puts the Belgorod to Izium supply lines by road and rail in range of Ukrainian artillery.

Maybe they could campaign to be bumped up to tier 5 if all the Premier clubs become licensed? A north-east-west split would make more sense in population terms. Might be a long shot in blazer politics terms but no harm trying to put issues like that on the agenda. Not so long ago relegation out of the SFL was regarded as lunatic fringe stuff by a lot of people.

Think it's safe to assume it isn't a rocket. The power plant on Sakhalin going on fire recently was even more mind boggling in distance from Ukraine terms and those two happening in quick succession after the solvent factory in Moscow and research institute in Tver points quite strongly to a pattern of widespread active sobotage. Unless the Russians are simply spectacularly inept at the moment (Valery Gerasimov allegedly meeting dozens of senior staff officers within Ukrainian artillery range makes that difficult to entirely discount) cyber attacks are probably the most credible way that could be coordinated without any high profile arrests of saboteurs happening inside Russia.

Something that could easily happen and would be a weird quirk will be a team getting relegated with a positive goal difference.

This would be on the goalkeeper angle no doubt. Difficult to see what grounds they have for appeal if they chose to withdraw. Sounds like they were trying to find a procedural way for the playoff not to happen in a similar manner to the antics that surrounded the Club 42 playoff when Brechin City were involved. Not having their ground ready for the second leg would fit on that.

Why would the Russians hold a meeting involving their chief-of-staff and up to 100 officers leading their big offensive within artilley range of the Ukrainians near Izium when they know the Ukrainians have just been supplied with modern howitzers and guided munitions? If this stuff doing the rounds on twitter is accurate the level of stupidity on their part is breath taking.

My mistake should have written WoS champion in the context of 6 relegated.

If 53 is safety that means Bonnyton, Blantyre, Cumbernauld, Rossvale, Kilbirnie and Benburb are going down as none of them can reach 53 at this point. If the EoS champion wins the playoffs so that only 6 are relegated I think that's maybe a bit premature where Benburb are concerned because I seriously doubt all three of Glenafton, Largs and Glencairn will finish above them.

The usual suspects with senior vs junior obsessions will oppose this for blazer politics reasons but even if a few of the leagues steer clear initially it's still well worth doing and the obvious next step in terms of having an integrated national pyramid system.

Think a big part of all this is that if it's a war they can legally send conscripts at that point. They still have the equivalent of 12 months national service on the go so that gives them access to more troops relatively quickly who they already have called up and have been actively training and that probably shores things up for longer. The problem they have beyond that apparently is that Ukraine went onto an all out war footing and mobilised a much larger age cohort a couple of months ago so is well ahead of them in training new highly motivated forces. The Ukrainian army is also about to receive all kinds of modern weaponry from NATO to arm those newly trained forces with while Russia's military capacity is slowly degrading away.

Even China still recognises Ukraine's 2014 borders. Not viewing Crimea as Russian de jure is not just a Western posture.

World War II style conscription so they have the boots on the ground needed to storm defensive lines and hold territory with a hostile population in the aftermath. With the sort of weaponry NATO is sending now they are going to have a huge problem finding sufficient numbers of serviceable tanks and military vehicles in a few months even if they do that but it would drag things out a lot longer.

Bonnyrigg ran away from the pack in the LL every bit as much as Kelty did and that included full-time professional Old Firm colt teams this time around. Cup games have shown that there isn't a gulf in standards between the lower end of the SPFL and top teams at tier 5 or in the WoS and EoS. Could go either way but I'd lean more towards Bonnyrigg getting the job done.

Really? Cowdenbeath needed penalties the last time they were up against the LL champion.

Doesn't look like any subs have been named for today's game but Greg Skinner is back:

Think it's clear now that Russia needs to fully mobilise in the not too distant future or they will be in real danger of a humiliating defeat very few people in the West thought possible back in February. That last bit means some of the other basic assumptions that were generally held at that point are starting to be questioned as well. Think people are getting a wee bit too far ahead of events because there's a strong possibility they actually will mobilise if losing Sebastopol, Donetsk and Luhansk emerges as a credible scenario.