AMB

Sad to hear the of the situation at Colville. The model which Colville park operated under the last few years was never sustainable and the fact is the current situation unfortunately proves it.,that’s not a dig, just an observation. I genuinely hope they re group and go again, although they would need a lot of assistance in committee personnel, management and players, however if there is a genuine will to take them forward and sensible long term decisions are made, then you never know, and I for one hope they do They will go down as one of the most successful amateur teams, and clubs would have loved there success, but was the price too much? only the people involved in it will be able to answer that. Hope to see Andy and Joe out and about at amateur games throughout the season, as a couple of good guys

When part of the Amateur set up I attended a meeting (probably about 8 years ago) where the SFA presented how they seen the future of football, including how they seen Amateur football panning out over the years. The current set up is nowhere near the structure they had in mind (and I include the Juniors) The Amateur Association I was involved in were not up for this and were all about protectionism for their league, when they should have been working with people to move forward together. I don’t fully agree with Tug on how he talks about Local leagues, but he does have a good point about changing structure and creating local interest and saving costs. Auld yin wae knowledge; Some of the stuff you suggest here seems decent but probably needs a bit of tweaking, but is a great start. There needs to be a healthy constructive debate about the future of the Amateur game and breathe a bit of fresh life into it. It isn’t all bad and there are some excellent clubs and people involved, but SAFA and associations certainly need to work with powers at be, as their are sensible people there, who are progressive thinkers but who also need to break free from the status quo and think of the game as a whole, rather than old view points and allegiances. There is a recently published paper on how football contributes to Scottish society and how many people (particularly youths) play football. In my opinion the Amateur game Plays a massive part in this and should get as good a platform as Youths, as the befits to society are massive I could go on about structures and how SFA and Local Authority policy is misguided in order to attract-public money into clubs who are “accredited” with youth pathways etc etc, but that is another debate......here Enders the rant

Finding the posts over the last few days very interesting. In my experience when there is debate over the league it means there is definitely something to debate. I.e there is something afoot within the workings of the league such as success of teams ( not an issue for top teams in CSAFL at the moment) committee structure, recruitment or retention of teams to name a few reasons The league definitely has an issue with retaining teams,not attracting them and that is down to a few things including SAFA, League structure and Clubs themselves. Each and every league has a duty to its clubs to continue to change and improve and engage those clubs in the process, not just have talking shops and no action. I am not sure the CSAFL has that drive at the moment, which has helped make it such a success over the years. To me it doesn’t seem a major issue at the moment, but if the league doesn’t work with all the clubs, it definitely will become an issue