LongTimeLurker

Not even close to the Spanish flu of 1918.

Probably In the absence of additional restrictions. Some people think London has already peaked in a similar manner to what happened first in Gauteng in South Africa. We need something like that to be blindingly obvious soon or Nicola Sturgeon will keep adding extra layers of restrictions to pretend she is in control when all she is really doing is slowing down the process of reaching herd immunity for that particular variant.

I guess you could argue that Rangers B or Celtic B finishing last or second last would have implications for those playoffs as well so maybe George Fraser & co have opened up another can of worms on that front as well because the other three leagues and SFA have to sign off any changes.

That wording quoted above appears to be exactly what the LL needed. Removing the line of latitude was clearly the quid pro quo in exchange for doing that. Not sure what scenario the post immediately above is referring to given clubs inherently need to be licensed to be able to play at tier 5.

If omicron follows its Gauteng trajectory in the UK (there are some signs London may have already peaked with a decoupling between case and hospitalisation rates), Nicola Sturgeon could wind up looking foolish which is probably the first step to exiting her overzealous nanny state approach.

If that was meant to be LTL my take would be that I wouldn't get your hopes up too much about the second bit as the SFA are unlikely to ever have as much leverage over the SPFL as they did this season where the LL is concerned courtesy of George Fraser where colt team rule changes were concerned. Will be interesting to see if the LL had to commit to anything else. Hopefully the pro/rel issue with the tier 6 feeders gets sorted at their next AGM but seeing will be believing on that one as it probably isn't as high a priority for the SFA.

If that means up to 500 allowed in total then everybody other than Pollok can probably proceed more or less normally at tiers 5 and 6. She is probably only thinking about the top two tiers with that last bit as that's all that is on the radar for a lot of people.

The line of latitude boundary between the HL and LL in the Club 42 playoff rules is now completely gone apparently: Remains to be seen if Brechin City will need to get promoted out of the HL to be able to take advantage of this in future. Would be amusing if they wind up permanently stuck in the HL and/or Midlands League and the redrafted Club 42 rule change winds up doing the square root of SFA in the larger scheme of things, but I doubt so much time and effort would have been expended on this matter for that to be the ultimate outcome. On the bright side we'll probably never see a detailed street map of Luncarty with a horizontal line throught it again on here. It was always a red herring.

Line of latitude completely gone so there is no longer any apparent anomaly where Luncarty, Letham, Scone and Tayport are concerned. I doubt there's any huge enthusiasm in EoS circles to drive to Dundee and beyond for away games so Forfar WE, Broughty and North End are unlikely to receive a positive response in the unlikely event that they tried again because they fancy trips to a West Lothian heavy tier 9. The EoS managed to get the east region eliminated as a potential rival LL feeder over almost all of their perceived catchment before this rule change happened so any mission creep is more likely to be southwards by the Midlands League to expand on their somewhat limited numbers rather than northwards by the EoS to expand further on their already bloated ones but there probably won't be anything too dramatic going on if it ever happens. Nothing retrospective in the rules to get Brechin City into the LL after the fact but that doesn't mean nothing is happening behind the scenes on that. It isn't Forfar, Montrose or especially Arbroath that were the main inspiration for this rule change. Brechin have been playing well enough in recent weeks that there is a fair to middling chance they will get promoted this season so that possibility probably has to unfold first.

Will be interesting to see the new version of the LL constitution when they sort out the gmail attachment issue: https://slfl.co.uk/rules/lowland-league-rules/ Scottish Lowland Football League Constitution and Rules Version 18 (Click the link below to view PDF document) SLFL Rules Version 18 Updated: 01/11/2021 The revision date provided lines up perfectly with this tweet:

Think I understand what he's referring to but the BUs still had to get the job done on the pitch that season to benefit from a ppg outcome so he's definitely not the sharpest tool in the box.

My wild speculation would be that the Killiepie man from Darvel will throw some money their way if they agree a second automatic promotion spot.

Blairgowrie is the third Midlands League club with floodlights going up and other significant ground improvements underway at the moment: https://blairgowriefc.co.uk/news/davie-park-upgrade

Let's keep that light spill in perspective though. A 60 W lightbulb typically provides about 800 lux, so that's nothing that a good pair of curtains can't deal with.

Not much point bringing in the new manager if they don't have something like that up their sleeve. A Scottish version of the Ron Atkinson at Peterborough United documentary series but with Ben Nevis as the backdrop might be one way to do it if they can find some mug to fund it.

Are they really likely to be drastically better than Threave Rovers, St Cuthbert's Wanderers and Stranraer Reserves if they become fixtures in the SoS? Don't think that's a given. Think they would really need to be in the WoS to draw in players from Cumbria looking for a higher calibre of play than they can get locally.

...they are not is the probable answer. Just as many smaller clubs in the SoS, EoS, WoS, Midlands and north region will probably never get around to doing licensing either given it's likely to be a moving target with extra hurdles like covered seating being added over time like floodlights were. If Tayside hadn't crashed the party at the very last minute nothing much was likely to happen any time soon in HL terms beyond Fort William getting replaced by BoD. Maybe another top north region club would find a way to do it in the next five years or so or Golspie would win a playoff but that's about it.

The politicians have lost the plot on this. The news coming in from southern Africa is not in the least bit similar to Wuhan in Jan 2020 or India in Feb 2021 where delta was concerned. Maybe the old story of generals still using tactics suitable for the previous war they were involved in rather than the one they are actually faced with in the here and now.

An unusual sounding theory I became aware of about 20 years back by spending way too much time around various nutters from the former Yugoslavia is that the real Josip Broz Tito was swapped for a non-Yugoslav by the Comintern some time in the 1930s and was actually probably Polish at least in the version I was told. There are other variations on the theme apparently: https://euobserver.com/news/29817 This was all based on him having had a very strange accent when speaking Serbo-Croat. Always had that filed under aye right because if Stalin had known what the Comintern had been up to on that why would he not have made it public when they had their big falling out in the late 1940s but I read recently that CIA linguistics experts looked into it in the 1970s and concluded that it was probably true: https://www.nsa.gov/portals/75/documents/news-features/declassified-documents/cryptologic-spectrum/is_yugoslav.pdf ...On the other hand, the simple fact that Tito is probably not the real Josip Broz who was born in 1892 does have some real significance. Firstly, Tito may very well be a much younger man. A second, and perhaps more important, point is that Tito's non-Yugoslav origin may explain his impartiality, and consequent success, in dealing with the various ethnic groups in Yugoslavia. It remains to be seen whether those who follow him will enjoy the same success. The more mainstream explanation would be that he picked up the strange accent through being a POW in Russia during WWI and eventually even getting married to a Russian.

...Black Beauty and I don't care who knows that.[/Jim McLean] Actually, A Dance with Dragons and if Winds of Winter doesn't get published soon I am not going to be impressed.

^^^you may not realise why posting that is a bit crass but best to remember that there are people on here who have actually been through that recently. Despite all the fearmongering by politicians and the media the data from South Africa to date points to omicron being far milder than delta and quite possibly the beginning of the end for COVID-19 as a major public health issue at least for now if variants like omicron can continue to outcompete the more virulent ones on transmissibility. A bit like H1N1 influenza after 1918 though it will likely always be out there like a Sword of Damocles waiting for immunity levels to dwindle as a younger generation emerges with no exposure to it.

Haven't checked but I assume that means the playoff is defined as being for the bottom placed club with nothing having been added to address the issue of what happens if a club folds and has its recored expunged midseason Selkirk style.

He's not worth wasting time on. Looking a bit ominous for Fort William though in terms of fulfilling all their fixtures this season if they are struggling for numbers to that extent on a Saturday afternoon. Can't be easy playing every game away from home. Hopefully local Fort William amateur players would actually be interested in playing in the NCL (presumably anyway) when the time comes.

Hope Neuchatel Xamax are doing well these days. A certain 5-1 scoreline still remembered fondly. Think you are a wee bit lost though in terms of which thread to post in.

The north region and the Midlands League (the east region) are both still affiliated in the first instance to the SJFA rather than the SFA so that's not strictly accurate. Why anybody still cares about the whole junior vs senior distinction at this point is another matter entirely though. It should all just be one pyramid but that would mean fewer blazers so it won't happen overnight. Think having an SPFL and an HL club in the same town is a significantly different scenario from some of the other possibilities where it would be two HL clubs but can understand why it's not something that's high on the agenda right now.