Juniors in the big Scottish do we deserve to be there?

[The Moonster]

Just now, Burnie_man said:

There are no dots the connect, the League Cup returning to groups is a flawed concept for a competition on its last legs, most people could see that. It'll go back to straight knock-out, or be scrapped altogether before long. Nice try at linking it to league regionalisation though.

Why are you talking about groups? The competition was regionalised much in the same way you're talking about splitting leagues (north and south) and you still had teams making 5 hour journeys. It didn't vastly increase crowds either. How can you not see the link between what you're suggesting?

[Burnie_man]

2 minutes ago, The Moonster said:

Why are you talking about groups? The competition was regionalised much in the same way you're talking about splitting leagues (north and south) and you still had teams making 5 hour journeys. It didn't vastly increase crowds either. How can you not see the link between what you're suggesting?

You're trying to link a flawed backward step in a dying cup competition, to league systems.

There's no point even discussing it lol

[The Moonster]

Just now, Burnie_man said:

You're trying to link a flawed backward step in a dying cup competition, to league systems.

There's no point even discussing it lol

You're right. We'll leave it there.

[Talbot Bing]

Love this wee guy. [emoji23]

[Guest]

4 hours ago, fueradejuego said:

Clubs can find their level - so you would be happy with Talbot moving from a top Junior club winning trophies on a regular basis to being a lower end League 2 side constantly fighting off relegation if that's your level? (I don't think that would be your level provided the club continued to develop itself as it has done in the Juniors but some changes would be necessary)

I can never understand what your actual point is in any of your posts.

You always talk about a vibrant non league system, as if the name of the league somehow makes a difference. Whether you chose to call League 2 senior football or rebrand it as something else, its likely to remain in some shape or form in an expanded pyramid system (if that ever comes to fruition).

 

Without being disrespectful to senior leagues my man, because people are clearly fond of their clubs and quite rightly protective of the grade, but my club, who are entirely self generating and progress on and off the park most seasons are a model of self reliance and are able to thrive on their own two feet. They are therefore a good model for any club to replicate. However, they have no interest in the lower reaches of senior football, too expensive all round and is not exciting. It's not so much the clubs that don't excite but the set up that has rolled along for years. I wouldn't mind playing Arbroath or Brechin in a national competition, good away day. If you don't get my point it is this. Senior football should be for genuine big clubs who have the potential to go full time or if not have the ground and support to merit the grade. Not my club or the ones mentioned above. They should be in a regionalised non league like Germany which works very well. If a club can grow and genuinly bring a plate to the senior table, great, go for it and progression should be possible. The top regional non league clubs should get entry into the big Scottish and all should enter into a national non league cup. The top clubs from each region should play off to find a winner. A new fresh set up could revitalise and is perhaps the kick start our country needs. 

[HibeeJibee]

Your proposal involves senior clubs - especially SPFL clubs - surrendering almost everything but junior clubs almost nothing, not to mention your arbitrary insulation of full-time sides.



I think TheMoonster's point about the League Cup sections is that regionalisation does not actually work very well given the current distribution of teams and therefore this would be a reason clubs don't see much or any improvement in it. If you divided SPFL1 & SPFL2, or those leagues & HL & LL, these would currently be the levels - current levels separated by /.


North - Brechin, East Fife, Peterhead, Stenhousemuir // Arbroath, Cowdenbeath, Elgin, Forfar, Montrose, Stirling Albion

South - Airdrie, Albion Rovers, Alloa, Livingston, Queen's Park, Stranraer // Annan, Berwick, Clyde, Edinburgh City


North - Peterhead // Elgin // Brora, Buckie, Clachnacuddin, Formartine, Deveronvale, Forres, Fort William, Fraserburgh, Huntly, Keith, Lossiemouth, Nairn, Rothes, Strathspey, Turriff, Wick

SPFL East - Brechin, East Fife // Arbroath, Berwick, Cowdenbeath, Edinburgh City, Forfar, Montrose // Cove, Inverurie / Civil Service Strollers, Edinburgh University, Gala, Preston, Selkirk, Spartans, Whitehill, Vale of Leithen - (or Stenhousemuir // Stirling Albion // Stirling University?)

SPFL West - Airdrie, Albion Rovers, Alloa, Livingston, Queen's Park, Stranraer, Stenhousemuir // Annan, Clyde, Stirling Albion // BSC Glasgow, Cumbernauld, Dalbeattie, East Kilbride, East Stirlingshire, Gretna, Hawick, Stirling University - (or Gala, Selkirk, Vale of Leithen?)



United non-league cup would be attractive but it clearly couldn't fit in. HL has 34 league games to play, precious to no space as it is, and HL & LL have to be finished by mid/late April for pyramid playoffs. On the flipside the Juniors start later and finish later, issue fixtures week-to-week (whereas HL & LL run lists), don't use lights, give cup more priority over league, etc. etc.

[Talbot Bing]

Noticed that since Burnie_man came on and gave his tuppence worth the seniors fans haven't been so dismissive of this thread. Some are actually putting decent sentences across.
Well done didn't see that happening.
Maybe that wee win for BRR has caught their attention like a bunch of meerkats.

[cmontheloknow]

Just on the point of Medda's gates, all of the new entries to the SPFL's lowest division in the past few decades saw a surge in attendances. It's pretty clear that there are people who will not watch a non-league game that will go to an SPFL match in L2. I'm pretty sure that Meadow, even struggling in L2, would find a sizeable few hundred to go each week.

[Hillonearth]

1 hour ago, Talbot Bing said:

Noticed that since Burnie_man came on and gave his tuppence worth the seniors fans haven't been so dismissive of this thread. Some are actually putting decent sentences across.
Well done didn't see that happening.
Maybe that wee win for BRR has caught their attention like a bunch of meerkats.

 

It's probably because since the Bonnyrigg result they've realised it could happen to them one day. Of course league sides will always continue to win the vast majority of these cup ties - sometimes heavily - as they're playing at a higher level week in and week out but the possibility's there.

It's got to be said a minority of Junior fans don't help their case though by consistently portraying the grade as on a par with the lower reaches of the SPFL: the very top sides maybe aren't too far off, but there's nevertheless a gap which has been borne out by the majority of results in the Scottish Cup over the last ten years

[itzdrk]

22 hours ago, Burnie_man said:

Where the players live is immaterial, that's not the concern of the SPFL, however Peterhead will make over a dozen journeys to the central belt for league football this season, plus two to Stranraer. Elgin will make two journeys each to Berwick and Annan, plus another 8 to the central belt. So these journeys are not extremely rare either.  Travelling fans will be minimal, particularly midweek.

This all to play in front of crowds ranging from 300-600. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, and yet the Juniors are accused of being backward in not joining a Pyramid and aspiring to league football? Maybe they can see the insanity that awaits in League One and Two.

We need someone to be "radical" (although I prefer the term sensible) when it comes to looking at the failures of Scottish football and where we can improve.

What exactly is radical about local football, that's what amateurs do. 

I don't consider many journeys in Scotland to be particularly long.  I did Peterhead 3 times last year and once on a Tuesday.  Same with Stranraer.

We had more fans at the Tuesday game (Peterhead) than the Saturday ones actually. 

[1320Lichtie]

My good man, can I suggest that if you can get from Montrose to Ayr in two hours, there is a certain world champion formula one driver just resigned, perhaps you could fill the vacancy?

Put it into google maps. 2 hours 11 minutes. 150 miles it's not far.

[1320Lichtie]

What exactly is radical about local football, that's what amateurs do. 

I don't consider many journeys in Scotland to be particularly long.  

There aren't. Even going to Annan the other week. Train to Edinburgh Haymarket, just over an hour. Train to fucking Carlisle 1 hour 17 minutes. To go all the way to Annan, well past it even. It's a small country. Not one person I know connected to Arbroath wants local football games. Like you say that's what amateurs do, even when I played amateur you travelled 45 minutes for some games. Big deal. Juniors travel the length of the east coast too. What's local about Tayport v Peniciuk?

[itzdrk]

2 minutes ago, 1320Lichtie said:

 

There aren't. Even going to Annan the other week. Train to Edinburgh Haymarket, just over an hour. Train to fucking Carlisle 1 hour 17 minutes. To go all the way to Annan, well past it even. It's a small country. Not one person I know connected to Arbroath wants local football games. Like you say that's what amateurs do, even when I played amateur you travelled 45 minutes for some games. Big deal. Juniors travel the length of the east coast too. What's local about Tayport v Peniciuk?

 

It's a very strange mindset that someine would be thinking "all the way up there?" About Fife. 

[1320Lichtie]

"We like it so everything is fine"   as I said, there's the problem with Scottish football right there.

Compared to

We don't like it it needs to change

?

[1320Lichtie]

Only because they get very generous subsidy handouts from the SPFL and SFA for having a strong voting block at AGMs. Take that away and there would soon be regionalisation beneath the second tier.

Said this in other thread...

If we win league this season we would get £54k

Our game v Dundee United, one game would have made us about 40k

Our game against Forfar 16/17k

Not fair or true to use that term

[Bankies Alive]

1 hour ago, 1320Lichtie said:

 

Said this in other thread...

If we win league this season we would get £54k

Our game v Dundee United, one game would have made us about 40k

Our game against Forfar 16/17k

Not fair or true to use that term

 

We get nothing in the Juniors! The £40k that E.Stirling got for finishing bottom last season is more than our entire playing budget for the season.

Everyone involved in running the club is a volunteer and every penny is a prisoner!

If clubs like your own weren't a part of the SPFL you'd be in the same boat as we are.

Lets face it the companies that are sponsoring the SPFL aren't doing it because of the exposure they'll get at Arbroath v  Forfar!

 

 

[JakeSAFC]

We get nothing in the Juniors!
 

Join the pyramid then.

[CityDave]

On 08/12/2016 at 13:33, Burnie_man said:

That's why I said regionalisation isn't and never will be perfect, just because Annan, Peterhead and Elgin accepted it in order to gain league status doesn't mean to say they wouldn't like to see a form of regionalisation introduced. Maybe they do, maybe they don't, but looking at the whole picture there are 160+ semi-pro clubs that sit outwith the current "Pyramid" structure, that's a lot more than are actually in it. That suggests something is wrong if 2/3rds of clubs want nothing to do with it in its current form, and perhaps this step would be part of a solution to get everyone involved.

No SPFL club wants regionalisation they want to participate in a national league, was this subject not brought up at the merger meetings and at the first SPFL meeting and knocked back?. The idea of trying to force a pyramid point to start at the third tier is a non starter. I don't know what Regan is seeing but what we have now is not a pyramid but a ladder system with platforms(tiers). I wouldn't take the ramblings of that man seriously especially after his performance during the 'Sevco Summer' and how little he has done to move Scottish football forward since. No point in trying to force a pyramid higher up just to get a pretty pattern of clubs, no one wants it in the SPFL.

Is this what the Juniors want, regionalisation in the SPFL? What is the logic behind that?

Clubs should be allowed not forced to play in a league system they are not happy with and I've seen and heard a few clubs in the North Juniors unable to cope with being promoted to a bigger regional league simply because they struggle for their best players, squad numbers and finances to travel. So the size of the regional leagues are just as important but it all depends on the level of the clubs and if they can afford it.

A proper pyramid under the current set up cannot be a true pyramid without a lot more clubs participating in it and yes there are a lot of clubs outside that could make it so. The problem is do these Junior clubs really want to be part of it or stay put?

 

[Ivo den Bieman]

1 hour ago, 1320Lichtie said:

 

Said this in other thread...

If we win league this season we would get £54k

Our game v Dundee United, one game would have made us about 40k

Our game against Forfar 16/17k

Not fair or true to use that term

 

 

Long Time Lurker made up his mind sometime thirty or forty years ago that senior cliubs are "subsidised".

You won't change his mind on the subject with facts or reason. It's like hoping for a block of diamond-encrusted granite to be washed away by a shallow burn overnight.

[1320Lichtie]

We get nothing in the Juniors! The £40k that E.Stirling got for finishing bottom last season is more than our entire playing budget for the season.

Everyone involved in running the club is a volunteer and every penny is a prisoner!

If clubs like your own weren't a part of the SPFL you'd be in the same boat as we are.

Lets face it the companies that are sponsoring the SPFL aren't doing it because of the exposure they'll get at Arbroath v  Forfar!

 

 

Well do up your ground and join its not difficult. It's really pretty annoying seeing this subsidised talk. Clubs are all backed and sponsored well within their community's. Arbroath average was something like 651 even though we finished 9th, at £13 a head adults and £7 concessions. The community back it to a decent level and clubs put in hard work. The prize money is a tiny tiny percentage of what we actually take in a season. This subsidised talk really gets on my tits.

And I never said it was but everyone in the pyramid plays their part. I have a great interest in all the clubs, like most lower league fans. If that was the case it would be a 6 team league only involving Rangers, Celtic, Hearts, Hibs, United and Dundee.