Hillonearth
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Posts posted by Hillonearth
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On 04/02/2023 at 09:37, Rizzo said:
The nuthatch (realised today that there is a pair of them) are yesterdays news. Been a while since I've seen my favourite in the garden but there was a few flitting about today.
LTTs are great fun to watch....I remember one frosty morning seeing a big load of them exiting a nest box we had set up where they'd obviously been sleeping....looked like one of those videos where you try to cram as many folk in a VW Beetle as possible....must have been 15 or 20 of them scrunched up in there for heat.
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Somebody very audibly taking a shite during a work meeting was a highlight.
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1 hour ago, ICTChris said:
The trial saw some of the most harrowing and disgusting evidence ever heard in a Scottish court.
One of the pieces of evidence was that the seven year old girl who In es was found to have repeatedly raped was infected with chlamydia, which Innes was found to have.The seven year old victim also said that Innes gave her money after he abused her, she was found with £2.10 in a purse she had. She said of the two murder victims “I should have saved them”.
[\spoiler]You do feel for the jurors - they're just normal punters who got a letter through telling them to show up and walked into that.
I had to serve on one a while back for a noncing case and while it was nowhere near in the same ballpark as this one, there still were a couple of things that'll stay with me.
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7 minutes ago, holmparkheroes said:
That’s okay for the punters, but don’t forget that the players and management staff need to be there one and a quarter hours before kickoff and kit people even before that.
Oh, totally - I can remember one time not that long ago when we were slated for a 6.30pm kickoff over at Shotts and witnessed a carload of our players screeching into the car park at 6.25 and getting out in full kit. Hardly ideal preparation for the game.
As I say, I'm not advocating a return to the old ways...just on a personal level I find myself less likely to take in a game at night when I'm not likely to make it home till closer to 11.
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10 hours ago, jimbaxters said:
The weather is a big factor though. A lot of the old boys are not going to come out when it's so cold. As the previous post has said, a late summer/early Autumn evening is much more appealing.
Another factor I don't think has been mentioned is the the fact that games are now starting at anything up to 8pm....I'm certainly not advocating we go back to the bad old "Satan's incandescence" days, but a lot of time you'd take a flyer on a random 6.30-7pm kickoff game on the way back from work or whatever. Once I'm back home - or indeed if I've been working from home that day - I find myself a lot more CBA about heading back out unless the game's mega-local.
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This thread aged well.
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Renfrew 0 Maryhill 2
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5 hours ago, Arthurlie1981 said:
I can guarantee you that we were not in agreement with SJFA over the direction of the game at that time. I gave some comments to the BBC at the time criticising the SJFA only to receive a call from them telling me of the implications if we ever did leave (reduced gates being the death of my club so I was told). Ultimately we decided not to take forward our application for the LL or explore other options at that time due to some of the reasons that Hillonearth commented on earlier. We weren't the only ones in the west either (most of the old central clubs looked at the options available to them).
Yeah, it seems to be one of the enduring myths around what transpired that all the West teams were entirely happy with the status quo when in many cases the opposite was the truth. I think I've said on here before that we were quite pro-change, but assumed we'd be in a minority before speaking to people from a few clubs I'd certainly previously thought of as being traditional "juniory" setups and finding they were just as up for change as we were.
You can pretty much judge where the clubs were on the page regarding change by the order they declared they were applying for the WOS....I'd say the first few dozen were genuinely up for it, there would have been some more ambivalent ones after that, and the last 15-20 only applied reluctantly because they realised the kind of blasted hellscape they'd be left to play in after most of the other sides left.
While picking over the bones of how we ended up so far behind the curve compared to the other side of the country won't retroactively fix that fact, it's at least useful to be aware of the reasons of how it came to pass...I'd said on the other thread that blame can be apportioned to a combination of the SJFA and at least some of the clubs who hadn't done due diligence.
I attended both of those meetings just before the first lockdown that effectively ended the old West Region and set up the WOSFL, and for me the clincher of the SJFA one at Hampden was when one of the delegates present - from memory it was the guy from Pollok - effectively backed the SJFA into a corner where they had to admit they were now in the business of prioritising their own survival over the best interests of "their" clubs, which in itself I found interestingly proprietorial language.
I wouldn't lump it all on them though...as I said, some of the clubs should shoulder at least some of the blame by the way they accepted what they were being told at face value and then buried their heads in the sand hoping it would all go away. Some of the club statements in the aftermath made it obvious that they didn't quite understand what was going on...we had quite a few thinking they'd been asked to join the LL, others thinking the new league would be under the auspices of the SJFA and so on.
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On 27/01/2023 at 21:21, invergowrie arab said:
No you wouldn't.
George Galloway likes to pretend he was brought up in a version of Lochee akin to Free Derry.
He was brought up the son of a professional family in, at the time, would have been new desirable council housing. I've no idea what Church he did or didn't attend but we went to non- denominational Charleston Primary and Harris Academy when there was plenty alternative denominational schooling around.
He's a Tammany Hall politician happy to play to the gallery up to any community where he thinks he can get votes.
Totally - I remember running into him when I was living in the west end and he was running for Glasgow Hillhead. At that point Labour would have got in there if they'd nominated a multipack of Wotsits with a red rosette pinned to it, but he still saw the need to play the sectarian card.
I was in the Smiddy in Partick one night which is nominally a Celtic pub - not THAT kind of Celtic pub though - and there were a group of us in from both sides of the OF and neither side. At some point in the night, in walks a pre-Ronald Villiers tribute act GG, who proceeded to walk round the tables giving it the full Tiocfaidh ár lá routine and totally misreading the vibe of the place. Predictably a couple of dafties seemed to be lapping it up, but generally he was either being laughed at or told to f**k off.
He still got back in though, but that was Labour in Scotland back then.
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2 hours ago, sweep said:
I will now ask the question are there not far more capable teams in lower divisions
Of course there are - right from the start I don't think the LL has been the strongest group of non-league sides south of the Tay.
That being said, it was never a case of joining the thing by invite...it was by application, and very few of the strongest non-league sides applied initially, partly because of the stalling tactics of the SJFA who were assuring clubs year after year that progress was being made when in reality it wasn't at all and they were hoping the whole issue would go away and they could carry on as they always had.
Another important factor was that the set-up of the LL favoured new-build startup clubs who had very little to lose if the whole thing went tits up...in the west due to the lack of a pre-existing alternative senior league an East Kilbride or BSC could go all-in in the way that a long-standing club couldn't, especially considering the fact that anyone who jumped ship was being unequivocally told they'd need to start from scratch if they ever came back. The whole debacle has set the west of the country back a good five years behind the east.
As for Tranent, they're a senior club who has elected to retain the word Junior in their name as a nod to their past...nothing more, nothing less. It's similar in the WOS league; some have kept the "Junior" in the name of the club, while others have ditched it and yet others never had it in their club name at all. Hamilton have chosen to keep "Academical" in their name for similar reasons, but they're as much a school team these days as Tranent are a junior one.
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13 hours ago, rockson said:
No it isn't. If they won most group games and knock-out games they were clearly better than the teams they beat. In the scenario I cited the "top" team could be argued to be only luckier than the rest in their division - and not much better than the bottom one.
The point I was trying to make was that while the poster I quoted said they would be worthy of promotion they obviously wouldn't have demonstrated that worthiness. Under the rules they'd still get promoted though.
No, they'd be better than the rest of the teams in the division by dint of the fact they finished top.
A tight league finish isn't indicative of the top team not being ready for promotion - more often it's indicative of it being a strong, competitive league where a whole group of sides are promotion-ready and have taken points off each other. I know in Scotland - especially in the Premier - we're inured to the scenario where the champions win at a twelve-point canter from second place who ends up another twenty points ahead of third, but it's not the norm.
And the concept of being "worthy" of promotion other than ending up top on the final day is entirely subjective - the criteria are entirely in the hand of the beholder. Let's say SPFL 2 ends roughly the way it stands at the moment as pretty much a two-horse race with Stirling winning their game in hand....would mean Dumbarton win the league by a single point leaving Stirling with a better goal difference.
Doesn't look that "worthy" to me TBH...I think you should both go in the playoffs because they did better in one of the metrics. See how ridiculous it looks?
It's purely protectionism, putting as many roadblocks and second chances for redemption in the way because every team from the Championship downwards knows fine well they're only a couple of shite seasons away from doing a Cowdenbeath....and they were in the Championship themselves a decade ago.
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7 minutes ago, Shotgun said:
I'm friends with a guy who was a fireman, and one of the few liberals in a traditionally conservative profession. He told me how serious the Covid pandemic was going to get, having attended to some of the first victims in Colorado. He was frustrated that so few people were taking it seriously at that time and campaigned to raise awareness. At the height of the pandemic, a work injury required him to take early retirement and he moved his family to Florida, where he was originally from.
Within about 6 months, he became a full on Trump supporting, anti-masking Covid denier. I just don't get it.
Think you just answered your own question...Florida Man in action
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9 hours ago, Sherrif John Bunnell said:
Linehan. From writer of beloved sitcoms and comedy panel show regular, to being so obsessed by Trans people that his family have left him and he will get nowhere near a mainstream writing gig again. All because some people pointed to him that out that one episode of the I.T. Crowd was a bit iffy.
Just £200 a year will get you into his gang and get it right up The Woke Stasi.
With Linehan I suspect it wouldn't have taken much to tip him over the edge in the first place. I made the mistake once of having a half-hour to kill and turning on his commentary track on an IT Crowd DVD - I figured since he'd been at least partly responsible for that along with Black Books and Father Ted he'd actually be quite funny himself.
I was obviously wrong...he came across as a dull, miserable, self-absorbed over-analytical weirdo. If you own any of his series, have a listen yourself...the guy was an accident waiting to happen.
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Roger Waters is another one who seems to have embraced his inner moonhowler in recent years.
A weird minor one is also universally-unloved former Rainbow singer Joe Lynn Turner - his tenure with the band was their shite AOR years - who also seems to have gone off the deep end. He covers most of the usual bases here:
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In terms of what we could actually do, the most effective thing is for our clubs to keep beating theirs. Make it obvious that while there's a lip service pyramid in operation, the dice are currently loaded in favour of the teams currently sitting behind the two present bottlenecks of LL and SPFL entry...in both cases there are tranches of teams effectively hiding from assuming their real place in the pecking order. A lot of them are aware their time's almost up and are attempting to prolong the inevitable as long as possible. Turkeys will never vote for an early Christmas, so at the moment all our sides can do is beat them as often and as heavily as they can when they meet competitively.
Bear in mind in the west we're five or more years behind schedule in terms of the pyramid anyway...sure, a lot of it can be blamed on the lack of a viable pre-existing league to join along with the intransigence and disinformation of the previous hierarchy, but quite a lot of blame also lies with at least some of the clubs who had to be faced with the reality of what was going to be left behind and had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the pyramid system....truth be told, very few pushed as hard as they could have done, so it's a bit rich if we get pissy two years in because it's not moving fast enough for our liking.
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1 hour ago, MEADOWXI said:
Although now not junior team a year before the Sunnybank v Albion Rvrs game, on 28/11/09 Irvine Meadow XI beat Arbroath in the Scottish to become the first ever Junior team to beat league opposition in a competitive game.
Meadow are now in the West Premier same as Darvel.
You're right of course - I had it in my mind those two games were in the same season. The Sunnybank one obviously stuck out more as it felt like there was a bigger shock there.
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1 hour ago, Highlandmagar said:
No one can equal Queens Park in 1892-93.
Beat league sides Hearts and Celtic as a non league side to win the cup.
Or Season before that.
Beating Dumbarton( who won the league) and Renton before losing in the final.
And again in 1899-1900.
Getting to a losing final beating league sides Dundee and Hearts on the way.
Don't ever see that being equalled.
In the decade prior to 1893 Queens Park had twice been beaten finalists in the FA Cup...the only reason they refused to join a league was that they thought it would dilute their amateur status, preferring to play friendlies and cup competitions. They were still one of the biggest teams in Scottish - perhaps world - football at that point, and weren't some plucky no-hoper non-league side.
I'm maybe in a minority in that I don't really see the Aberdeen/Darvel result as much of a shock...for all Darvel are in the sixth tier they're in a false position due to the pyramid project being in its infancy certainly in the west. There's always at least one sugar-daddy backed team in non-league who are financed at a level far higher than the level they're playing at who can consequently attract players to step down to play for them - at the moment it's Darvel and TBH they could probably hold their own in League 1. The actual result didn't feel like a shock last night...the only eyeopener was just how gutless and pish Aberdeen were.
To me, the Drumchapel United v FC Edinburgh result earlier this season probably felt like a bigger upset, but again there were extenuating circumstances....Edinburgh clearly didn't fancy it on a quagmire of a pitch up at Lochburn on the day. Prior to that, maybe Sunnybank from Aberdeen being the first current junior side to beat a league side in the Scottish...it was obviously coming at some point, but with the North being by far the weakest of the old junior regions, it was a real surprise when it came from that direction.
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13 hours ago, Burnieman said:
My point is, we don't need that criteria at the lowest levels, let them continue the way they are - but organise the disparate leagues into an "amateur" Pyramid in each region and take it from there. Not easy I know, it appears to have been tried and failed recently in Glasgow. Many of these clubs already have spectators, maybe not many but people do turn out, particularly at the more successful clubs.
If there's a "Pyramid" within the West with an identifiable top league(s) eg Ayrshire Premier & Glasgow Premier, then at that point promotion/relegation can be considered in some form, voluntarily, where ground requirements start to kick-in.
Probably all unlikely and first it really needs an overhaul of the registration system and abolition of amateur status, to a more simple process.
As I alluded to, an easier path is to create regional divisions at the lowest levels in the WoS and EoS which always have an open door.
I think the whole process would be much simpler in the East where the LEAFA is pretty much the only game in town (although even there there's a Sunday section to complicate things), but in the West the situation's a complete mess; there's the CSAFL, the SAFL, the Caledonian and the GGPAFL for starters playing Saturday afternoons, along with the Saturday morning setups: the SSMAFL, the churches league and the colleges league (both historically named - there are very few colleges or churches actually playing in them), not to mention another three full league systems playing on Sundays around greater Glasgow....and I haven't even mentioned either Ayrshire or the other leagues not currently affiliated to the SAFA...things like the Co-operative League or the Glasgow Chinese League!
Even if they started straight away it would probably take decades to sort that lot out into some kind of merit based order, and to what end? As I said before, I'm not sure the appetite even exists to formally link up with the pyramid as it stands...at some point there has to be a recognition that we've reached a level where the players and coaches are doing what they do recreationally; more or less purely for the fun and camaraderie...even at non-league level, how many times has a talented player signed on from amateurs, really looked the part and disappeared back there after a few months because "I want tae play with ma pals..?."
As I previously said the option to turn semi-pro should never be denied to the trace element of amateur sides that want to do so, but I feel the idea of reorganising the whole ammy game under the pyramid would be a lot of hassle and would be more driven by enthusiasm for reorganisation than driven by the end product it would actually deliver.
The odd ambitious ammy side that wants to join the pyramid leagues should always be able to apply - the sides already involved should never pull up the ladder behind them as has happened so many times before in Scottish football - but as I said before, there weren't exactly a flood of amateur applications when they were open the last couple of years. If we get any more than one or two every couple of years henceforth, I'd genuinely be surprised.
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31 minutes ago, Burnieman said:
I do appreciate all that, but in reality nothing needs to change that much at those very low levels. Indeed, incorporating them into a more stable/organised league structure may actually encourage clubs to become a little more stable themselves. A rope around a public pitch is really all that is required and clubs continue to play in that vein if they want to, but the door is open to those who want to move forward, without the need to apply and wait for vacancies.
Some ammy clubs are proper football clubs, some are guys with a bag of strips.
We have a situation in the WoSFL where 80 clubs = 5 divisions. Suggestions are it could then become a closed shop, that really isn't tenable, but then 3 or 4 new clubs applying for membership presents it's own problems with division size.
A solution is to split the lowest level into regions, at the very least Ayrshire / Glasgow type split which would free up space but as I said the SFA apparently don't like further regionalisation, reasons unknown. Maybe when Petrie departs it's worth another try.
Something needs to happen to ensure the growth of the Pyramid isn't stumped, and I agree that dealing with the amateur situation isn't easy.
In terms of future development of the pyramid, I think it would be the biggest and most indigestible chunk yet to absorb - compared to the amateurs, the juniors moving across would comparatively speaking look like a walk in the park as there existed an appetite for change amongst the clubs (if not the hierarchy!) that I doubt exists at amateur level. I honestly don't see where the chunks of three or four clubs at a time would come from...they certainly didn't when applications were open previously. I know a lot of people were salivating at the idea of Oban or whoever applying, but the applications simply didn't materialise.
And for me as I said the most crucial part of transitioning from an amateur to non-league setup is the consideration that spectators henceforth would now have to be catered for....a requirement which shouldn't be handwaved. Security of tenure of an enclosed ground which can be incrementally done up - in slow time, no need to run before you can walk - into something that resembles an actual football ground and provides a half-decent spectator experience. That instantly rules out 95%+ of current amateur clubs in this part of the world.
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7 minutes ago, AM-1 said:
Any recommendations as to where best to go with limited games on? Largs v Beith or Petershill v Cumnock?
Couple of short notice friendlies on;
Neilston v BSC @ Glasgow Green noon
Cumbernauld v Kilsyth @ Crownpoint 2pm
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23 hours ago, Burnieman said:
The flaw in all of this is the amateur status. Are senior clubs going to want to be relegated into an amateur league? Highly unlikely.
Amateur status really needs to be abolished first before any of this happens. Every player is just a player who can be paid a wage, or paid expenses only, or even pay to play. The status of their contract shouldn't be the driver, every contract/registration should be identical.
Alongside this, existing amateur leagues needs to be formed into their own Pyramid before their best teams can look to be promoted into the WoSFL or EoSFL, and even then, probably on a voluntary basis and not forced.
I'm not sure any of that will happen anytime soon, although the WoS / EoS should never become a closed shop.
For me there are too many cultural and organisational differences to overcome for the ammies to become part of the pyramid in the short to medium term...it's easy enough on the face of it to pretend apples and oranges are the same thing, but I'm fairly sure those toffee oranges aren't going to work out.
I completely agree that we shouldn't create another closed shop in the way that the SPFL did for so many years, but until there's some sort of root and branch reorganisation of the amateur grade - which I'm not sure there's an appetite for - ambitious ammy clubs probably need to proceed by application. It's notable so few did when the WOS Division 4 began though...it was never easier to apply than at that point.
There's an inherent stability issue at amateur level, even at the top end of the game...I think seven out of the last ten amateur cup winners have since folded....indeed BOTH of last season's finalists folded in the summer! We can point to the odd non-league team which has gone into abeyance, but relatively speaking it's a rarity....when you hit a level where your club infrastructure is a group of players and a bag of strips though it's much easier to do.
I'm not even sure that anything other than Saturday afternoon ammies are being discussed here...what about the other two large tranches of amateur clubs operating at Saturday morning or Sunday level? Are they to be incorporated or in their case have we finally reached a level where it's accepted that what they're doing is purely recreational in nature? If they're all incorporated playing at the same time there's instantly going to be a shortage of grounds to play at.
Grounds are a huge issue, certainly around the Glasgow area. Very few teams have first call on one, and the reality is that clubs can flit from park to park depending on what's playable and/or available at short or no notice...one club local to me has already used six home grounds so far this season and I'm sure they'll use more before it finishes. As things stand all they need to do is inform the ref, the other team and fire up a quick tweet on the off chance anyone's going to watch the game. Job done as things stand, but that kind of peripatetic informal approch would no longer be an option.
And I think that touches on the most important aspect. The most fundamental difference between non-league and amateur levels is that one is spectator-facing and one isn't. There has to be some minimum level of provision of facilities for spectators, and TBH I think we're already stretching it beyond the limits of what should be being charged for in the case of some of the newer sides already admitted...since my own team played last Friday, I went to see one of the new Div 4 sides on Saturday as not much else was on....a 3G cage with absolutely no cover with catering that extended to a vending machine. Given the weather, I didn't make it much past half-time and I wasn't alone. It's something important that any amateur side looking to make the move will have to address.
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Literally just finished decorating one of the bedrooms, so paint drying.
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Something being a carbon copy of something else.
I remember someone in my office asking if anybody had any carbon paper a few years ago and being roundly laughed at:
"Why don't you fax it instead?"
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1 hour ago, sparky88 said:
Putin screaming the safe word whilst he is invading another country is rather hilarious.
Silly c**t. His army's still present in a decent swathe of another country, and as it's being won back it's becoming abundantly clear what's going on in the parts still occupied. He's made it an existential fight for Ukrainians.
How out of touch must he be that he thinks he's got the ability to shout "keysies" and the two armies will come out of the trenches at Bakhmut and have a game of Shakhtar Donetsk v Spartak Moscow...actually, more likely Yenesei Krasnoyarsk given who's actually doing the fighting for him?
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Formation Of Lowland League
in West of Scotland Football League
Posted
Depends where you're travelling from, but the X74 bus that goes to Dumfries from Glasgow and Hamilton has been a gamechanger in terms of being able to see the clubs down there compared to travelling by train which takes forever...sure, there are a wee knot of sides in the hinterland - Newton, Wigtown, St Cuthbert's, Creetown - that are difficult to get to, but the likes of Abbey Vale and Lochmaben are short local bus journeys away from Dumfries, while the bus literally stops at the end of the street Lochar play on and also in Moffat for Uppers. Mids and Nithsdale are also both easily do-able by train from Central.