Shanner

Down for the Millwall v Boro game today. A trip to the Den has been high on the to do list for a while so right up for this.

Keen to see the enclosures. Definitely needed and bound to bring people along in the bad weather that might not have bothered. Great to see any junior side upgrading their facilities.

11,000+ replies.

quality thread!

This is daft talk.

Class, this sort of stuff is why I have a soft spot for the Candy. Can't think of a Junior team that try to do more for the vulnerable and disadvantaged.

that mean we're pyramiding it next season then?

some names that look odd in the same division as each other but nothing wrong with that. Absolutely no idea how it will go but I'll be taking in the odd game along the way.

Not sure about the floodlights thing tbh. I'm sure it was mooted as a possibility a few seasons ago and I don't think there were red tape issues just that the cost was prohibitively high for all they would be getting used. It would take someone better informed could clear that one up for you though.

It's still going to mean changes but that's preferable to watching the remainder of the Junior grade going into palliative care. Looking forward to seeing how this develops. the west really needs to get it's finger oot.

Is this likely to be pursued as a serious option now in light of events in the East? It seems like a reasonable solution.

nae worries!

to be fair you're not wrong. I think it's natural to lament the decline of this particular form of the game though as there are defiantly certain characteristics that won't survive the eventual transition even if other better aspects replace them. It's a hard thing to quantify, more of an emotional thing than anything else really.

If you're looking for someone to argue with you in defence of RRG you have gravely misjudged me!

RRG is a notable example of the other end of the spectrum on this debate. A walking, Tweeting disaster of a man. Best ignored as the moon howler he clearly is.

^^^^ A notable example of the kind of pie I was describing earlier.

It's strange that on a Junior forum, on a thread regarding the future of the Junior game, the notion of talking up the grade after an eventful couple of weeks attracts the level of sneering it does unless you qualify it with some self evident pish about other grades having the same thing. I doubt anyone if more in favour of a move towards a pyramid as myself but you have to wonder at why being a wee bit sorry about the decline of the grade is such a touchy point for folk.

You must also have dreamt that I made reference to either of those things. Stay off the cheese would be my advice.

Cheers mate, didn't know that.

Top drama in the juniors in the last week. Absolutely tremendous stuff. Will miss it when it's gone.

Fair enough, it's just something that to me and probably a number of folk on the Junior side of the fence would represent a nice token of continuity. Not a Junior Cup as such but a National non-league trophy. Anyway that horse has well and truly bolted.

I completely agree, a monumental arse has been made of it particularly on the Junior side and the whole thing has been overtaken by politics now. The Junior wounds are largely self inflicted and they've badly overplayed their hand in the west. Just to clarify I don't see the Junior cup as "big" but I do see it as holding massive social, historical, and all sorts of other importance that, purely by dint of being a more modest animal, can in many instances satisfy those hard to reach places the Senior Cup can't! It simply won't be bettered if it's left to wither on the vine so it should be front and centre of all serious integration attempts.

You've missed my point I think, and in quite an odd way. I wasn't really talking about history being eradicated Thanos-style because I kind of already know that doesn't happen but about the avoidable decline of a great trophy which could have been integrated into a new structure and it's cultural significance being lost, never to be replaced. "Getting the future right" should quite clearly include a continuation of the best things in conjunction with the new.

Posted this pompous overwritten pish in another thread but it fits in here too.... I agree that 2017/18 is likely to be remembered as the last "true" Scottish cup by most onlookers, which is a hard thing to admit about your favorite football tournament in the World. I'm massively in favour of an integrated solution to the current situation that takes everyone along, leaves no teams behind, and works hard to retain the best aspects of the Juniors, putting some much needed character, tradition and diversity into a fairly modern and sterile Pyramid non-league, certainly in the Lowland area anyway. That notion looks dead in the water now and the prospect of watching the impending decline of what is (and always has been) easily the best non-League competition in Scotland is unbelievably sad, more so because it could have been avoided with more cooperation and dialogue at the early stages. If that wasn't enough we all know it's inevitable that the Junior game will shrink westwards like the wee map at the beginning of Dad's Army until reaching a tipping point whereby it will be engulfed anyway, having spunked the considerable political leverage it once enjoyed. Meanwhile you see folk on here putting the boot into the Cup while still claiming to be fans of Junior football which I find utterly mental given the incredible romance and history of the thing, it's an absolute treasure and you don't need to have won it 12 times to regard it as such. Look at the list of early winners from the past that would be all but forgotten but for their place on that list and consider what they represent in terms of Scotland's social, political and cultural past and you might come to the same realisation as me that it's more or less blasphemous to risk losing it. Teams with symbols of industry on their badges and names that transports you straight to a time and place. This is why despite being quite progressive about restructuring I've got no time for some of the pyramid roasters on here who would fling the baby out with bathwater in the name of some OCD quest to have everything under a single umbrella at all costs. Anyway, the timing of all this has made the Talbot win on Sunday stand out as particularly special among their 12 wins. They're clearly the team immediately synonymous with the competition to most folk and only the biggest curmudgeon would ague that they don't deserve to be the last winner of the competition in it's final pomp as a National trophy. There was something brilliantly poetic about seeing all the threads of the story came together at the death as Tucker Sloan finally surpassed Knox with those 2 goals in the last 2 minutes of what feels like the last cup. A bittersweet day.

Telt yeese.