St-ow!

Maybe add Clyde and Clydebank to that list of potential full-time clubs. With a following wind. It's interesting that the big Premiership clubs see playing each other x4 each season as essential to consolidating their finances, as do the full-time Championship clubs, who all play x4 so larger away supports boost their finances. Meanwhile the part-time, non-league clubs use a regional model to corral the larger supports of more local clubs, and to cut out expensive longer away trips. Yet the part-time clubs playing nationally do not look to their own league structure and fixtured as a way of improving their finances. They wouldn't lose their SPFL subsidy by adopting parallel regional conferences, and would be acting rationally to seek out the larger crowds (i.e. from playing their local rivals x4 each season) in order to bolster their finances, in the same way that the other groups of clubs noted above do. I think you'd need a 12-team Championship to promote to if there were parallel conferences at tier 3, so I'd do justice to Partick and Falkirk by adding them to the Championship, with Kelty and Brora being justly brought in to replace them. So this season's conferences could look like: North Brora, Elgin, Peterhead, Cove, Montrose, Brechin, Forfar, East Fife, Kelty, Cowdenbeath. South Annan, Stranraer, Queen's Park, Dumbarton, Clyde, Stirling, Stenny, Airdrie, Albion, Edin City. Each conference winner could be automatically promoted, with promotion playoffs as one-off games between 2nd North v 3rd South, 2nd South v 3rd North, with the two winners in a round-robin wîth 10th from the Championship (11th and 12th having been automatically relegated). The bottom clubs from each conference could play off, with the loser relegated and replaced by the winner of the Highland-Lowland play off. Or expand the conferences to 12 teams each, with no-one relegated, the Highland and Lowland champion clubs promoted, and 2nd & 3rd of the Highland and Lowland leagues playing off for the two remaining places. And re-jig the conferences each season depending upon who from where is promoted and relegated.