LongTimeLurker

Seeing tweets like this a lot. Interesting times ahead for the Russian military if accurate: Only a few weeks back Poland sending some old MiG fighters was a step too far. At that point Ukraine may not be in NATO officially but it effectively will be an extension of it militarily for all practical purposes. Nice job Vlad. You almost had Nord Stream 2 up and operational but somehow that wasn't enough for you in geostrategy terms.

You could always do conferences with the bottom tier.

Portadown potentially relegated again? Changed days from two or three decades ago. Guess it pays to always get your paperwork in on time.

Thorn Athletic appear to be from Johnstone: https://www.thornathletic.com/ and West Park United from Bishopbriggs: https://westparkunited.co.uk/ Would Eglinton be from Kilwinning?

16 × 5 = 80

There's another one doing the rounds today showing a Russian soldier walking along nonchalantly chatting on his phone in a video chat session boasting about a mission he was just part of before something detonates in his immediate vicinity and it's very much game over. The drone clips we are seeing like the sunroof one are still the Ukrainians own DIY efforts. The latest hi-tech American kit in that regard is only just arriving.

..."as things stand". Think this latest rumoured info may relate back to that.

Detailed analysis of what's going wrong for Vlad in the Donbas and why that is well worth a read via Google translate: Click here for the translated version: https://threadreaderapp-com.translate.goog/thread/1519680827889700864.html?_x_tr_sl=uk&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp

Enlighten us then.

Something being talked about elsewhere that probably also belongs in this thread:

Lowland league clubs definitely shouldn't be able to vote on relegation issues that directly affect them. A decision like that should be an objective and strategic one taken by people looking out for the interests of the entire pyramid rather than those of their own club.

Definitely would along with the issue of where Gretna and Dalbeattie should be relegated to.

The administrative side shouldn't be underestimated obviously but if the will is there to put all the work in it can be done at that point unlike with the ground on something like floodlights. Think in Montrose Roselea's case there have been indications either on here or in the media that the will isn't there to push things further as things stand at the moment because Montrose is a relatively small town and already has an SPFL club.

...or at least until there is pro/rel with feeder leagues like the Lochaber Welfare FA. The pyramid is still a work in progress after all.

Over permafrost and through the *****a = good luck with that. No doubt doable eventually but not quickly and China will be able to drive a very hard bargain. As long as Russia was being misguidedly viewed as a reliable partner by Germany there was no real incentive for the EU to spend on alternative pipeline infrastructure like the Nabucco scheme but those alternatives do exist and the incentive is definitely there now. Edit: guess you can't use the Siberian forest word on here for Failed Statelet related reasons.

Haven't seen an appeal mentioned in any mainstream media source and the P&J seem confident to state: https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/sport/football/highland-league/4220498/north-caledonian-league-dont-see-any-problems-with-highland-league-drop-outs-fort-william-rejoining-their-ranks/ The Claggan Park outfit have been demoted from the Breedon Highland League after withdrawing from their pyramid play-off tie against North Region Junior champions Banks o’ Dee, which was scheduled to conclude on Saturday... so maybe reality kicked in when they had to sit down and figure out what the grounds for the appeal were going be. Once they withdrew they were toast regardless of the rights and wrongs of any HL ruling as far as I can see, because they failed to fulfill a competitive fixture at that point.

What happens to a petrostate that is largely propped up by the money EU countries have been spending on gas imports when those are phased out and the pipeline infrastructure isn't there yet to supply China instead on anything like the same scale? Vlad needed a quick victory with the EU accepting it as a fait accompli. He didn't get it and even Germany is sending Ukraine tanks now...

Interesting thing to ponder is why Strelkov/Girkin gets away with being so candid and doesn't seem to fear mysteriously falling from a balcony late at night. Remember reading back in 2014 that there's reason to believe based on police sketches from eyewitnesses at the time that he may have planted one of the apartment building bombs that propelled Putin to power in 1999 and provided a pretext (to be fair Dudayev, Basayev & Co were providing plenty without any help from the FSB) for the Second Chechen War.

Not sure why it's so difficult for some people to get their head around the complete absence of separate grades in the continental European style league format that the pyramid concept was based on. English football got rid of separate grades in the 1970s and slowly built their pyramid thereafter and initially it was that approach that Scottish football was allegedly trying to emulate. In the era when Gordon Smith was at the SFA the SJC winner and three superleague champions were allowed into the SFA's Scottish Cup as the first step to doing something similar to what had happened in England. The pyramid proposals emanating from the SFA at that point had both the junior and nonleague senior leagues feeding into the SFL through some type of Nationwide Conference style format. Later on in the McRae/Regan era the nonleague seniors were very much calling the shots given Alan McRae was from Cove Rangers originally and the "pyramid" became more a case of reforming the senior grade with Tom Johnston acting as their useful idiot on keeping the SJFA clubs completely out of things. There were extra roadblocks added to scare junior clubs away from getting licensed with the progression clause and even an attempt at an SFA AGM to remove the SJC winner and superleague champions from the Scottish Cup. Kelty finally told TJ where to stick his 100k toilet block and joined the EoS to become licensed and after many twists and turns things have swung back to the pyramid being a genuine one again with everybody on board after the SJFA clubs decided they wanted in and the SFA board did its best to faciliate that through the PWG process during the Petrie/Maxwell era.

Sounds interesting. Can you expand a bit on when this was and whether the LL clubs as opposed to some officeholder ever agreed to this in a formal vote? From what I have heard people in west region junior circles were being told all kinds of weird and wonderful things about the possibility of a split into LL East and LL West around January 2020 or so and how it would facilitate SJFA pyramid entry that soon turned out to be a complete non-starter when it went to the LL clubs at a general meeting.

Maybe the Bryansk thing was Turkish TB2 drones after all:

Not necessarily, if one of the top Midlands League clubs doesn't get licensed quickly and wins the title in the same season Golspie or FW do. Could see that scenario happening over the next five years. Hopefully not though so the influx of strong new clubs into the HL unfolds as quickly as possible.

https://www.thegowfers.com/club-to-be-part-of-the-scottish-football-pyramid/ ...However, to be eligible for promotion then clubs will need to comply with Highland League rules of which having an SFA Licence is the major part. To obtain a licence there are a number of criteria that we would need to comply and we have already started working on these to ascertain what we need to do. Andy Finlay has been looking at the Licencing requirements and making a start on several of the policies that need to be adopted and agreed as well as the improvement to facilities that we would need to carry out. We are in the position where the new policies are written and we will be obtaining advice on their suitability in the near future. The physical changes we will need to make to Laing Park are a different story and we will be making a plan for these in a near future but we anticipate that these will take a while to complete. Whilst obtaining the licence is a project that will take a while, we don’t believe it is beyond us and we would hope to be in a position off the park to be able to take advantage of any opportunity that is available to us from the efforts of the squad on the park in the medium term...

Are you sure? That looks very like Willie McVie in the foreground and the kit also looks like it could be Motherwell.

In both cases new language laws that sidelined Russian in a big way caused unrest in heavily Russophone areas. Most people in Crimea never really wanted to be part of Ukraine. Khruschev moved it from Russia to Ukraine pretty much on a personal whim in the 1950s. Putin often claims that Lenin did much the same where the Donbas was concerned when the Ukrainian SSR was formed but that's not quite as clear cut. Transnistria wasn't historically part of Moldova and was added to it under dubious circumstances by Stalin. There were always likely to be tensions when Soviet republics turned into sovereign independent states in other words because a lot of people thought the lines on the map were in the wrong place.