Junior football, what is the future?

[Burnie_man]

44 minutes ago, rednblack said:

So those who don't buy into this pyramid or lowland league are stuck in the 70s and backward thinking right you are whatever you say.

Nah, I'd actually say the 1950's.

[Burnie_man]

46 minutes ago, Auld Heid said:

I always felt given his prominence within the SFA that TJ was very much a company man.  Which suggests that the SFA don't see anything not linked to the LL being of any importance.  Maybe that explains the perceived lack of leadership being shown to move the juniors forwards.

Further proof being not allowing Kelty to be licenced outside the EoS feeder league.   Linlithgow being an exception before the goalposts were changed (but for how long). 

You don't flood the SFA with new members, and we won't squeeze yer baws to join, and we'll give you as couple of cushy committee positions. 

Plausible.

[santheman]

This thread just gets better and better.

First its ok to suggest bullying Junior teams into joining the pyramid and now accusations of the Office bearers being corrupt.

Doing a grand job of convincing us.

[Burnie_man]

Just now, santheman said:

This thread just gets better and better.

First its ok to suggest bullying Junior teams into joining the pyramid and now accusations of the Office bearers being corrupt.

Doing a grand job of convincing us.

Why do you think that anyone on an internet forum is out to convince anyone? people are having a debate on the issue and I rather suspect you're not up for convincing anyway.

Who are "us"?

[rednblack]

Nah, I'd actually say the 1950's.

Simply no true. That's a lazy thing to say ock yer a dinosaur stuck in the dark ages if you ain't for this pyramid and lowland. Stereotypical pish if you don't mind me saying.

[Burnie_man]

Just now, rednblack said:

Simply no true. That's a lazy thing to say ock yer a dinosaur stuck in the dark ages if you ain't for this pyramid and lowland. Stereotypical pish if you don't mind me saying.

The only stereotype that's being reinforced on here is that Junior fitba is backward. We still have a rule on re-instating players, we rarely play under floodlights, we don't have a full season fixture list, all basic stuff in the modern game and I'm sure we could come up with more, including refusal to engage with our national league system like the other 54 UEFA nations do.

It's not lazy, it's fact.

Some clubs are trying to break that stereotype and drag themselves into the 21st Century, and good luck to them but they don't get any encouragement or support from their national association.

Leaving aside the Pyramid for a moment, it's 2017 but you can't sign a player from certain clubs without "reinstating them", we still don't have fixture lists, a great many clubs still don't have floodlights, as a result you can't play midweek football for most of the season, we finish the season in a mad flurry of fixtures at less than a weeks notice, some clubs don't want to travel longer than the length of their own shadow, our national cup costs many clubs money to compete in instead of making them money, prize money is virtually non-existent. I could go on.

Yes, it's still the 1950's in the Junior world.

 

[rednblack]

Lazy lazy lazy

[Burnie_man]

Lazy lazy lazy

Feel free to challenge anything I've said.

[Shanner]

11 minutes ago, rednblack said:

Lazy lazy lazy

irony bypass with the effort that went into this.

[rednblack]

Feel free to challenge anything I've said.

You and others like you have your thoughts i and many others have ours. This won't change we will never agree and that is indicative of junior football it will always be divided on this.. You can bleat on here for however long and hope for change some of us will just get on enjoying the great grade we have. Thanks and all the best.

 

[Wile E Coyote]

3 hours ago, Shanner said:

Unless you think that winning Junior honours is the zenith of footballing achievement then it does display a very limited ambition to reject the chance to face bigger challenges in a National scale against better sides. 

The bigger Junior sides will always attract the flat track bully label as long as they seem content winning things in their wee separatist bubble. 

 

Is Celtic steamrolling everybody in the Scotland the zenith of footballing achievemment

[TheGothClock]

It's hard to see where the next generation of the traditional junior fan is coming from, the way football is being consumed is changing the world over, I think that the junior club in the traditional sense, the pie, the bovril, the half time draw etc will change over the next ten or so years, I also think that the financial changes in the game will also move the current set up to one with no player wages, no transfer / retention fees and eventually no admission fees, the clubs will become essentially elite amateur sides, I think that there is enough tradition and small town sentiment to keep our clubs going but i also believe they need to change the entire format to bring a new generation of fans, new revenues and higher attendances in the short to medium term, the senior game also needs to scale down to be more competitive (this is a whole other issues but there are 3 times as many professional clubs in Scotland than there are NFL teams in the United States, just think about that for a minute in terms of market size, fan base etc crazy) there are however some similarities we can use to boost the image an attendance of our junior game, for instance the USA has vast areas of rural / small medium size towns with local 'football' teams all trying to make a living, they excel, they thrive and the pull big crowds and big sponsors, how?, they clubs are intrinsically linked to their community via school teams, kids teams, local businesses , bars, churches, competitions, local media, free tickets for high schools, family tickets etc, now junior clubs in our towns and villages already do a lot of that stuff so I wouldn't be a million miles for many to push a little further on that score, but there are two other major factors why these small town teams excel, they realised 25 years ago that the family dynamic was changing and work an family stuff was preventing the 'typical fan' from attending games at the typical times and that the glamour of the senior/ professional game was dragging fans away also, they implemented three things;
- make the club more family/ community/ town centred
- don't play matches on the same days as the professional leagues
-alter the season start n end to bring in more summer matches and thus the Friday night match became a staple of small town America,

For years we've heard people say you get a better crowd with good weather an no senior games, so it's nothing new, sorry for rambling on and I'm no saying it would all work but surely some of those concepts would work in junior football,

[Shanner]

3 minutes ago, Wile E Coyote said:

Is Celtic steamrolling everybody in the Scotland the zenith of footballing achievemment

No, but they can play at a higher level than domestically so I don't get why you're asking me this? 

[Wile E Coyote]

12 minutes ago, Shanner said:

No, but they can play at a higher level than domestically so I don't get why you're asking me this? 

Because each club has a level due to resources, size of town etc. Celtic are not at the same level as Arsenal who in turn are not at the same level as Real Madrid.

Is scottish football any better now Edinburgh City have replaced East Stirlingshire. Would it be better if Talbot replaced Cowdenbeath or Bo'ness replaced Montrose.

Overall nothing would change as all current Junior clubs have nothing different or bigger to offer than current league teams

[parsforlife]

Because each club has a level due to resources, size of town etc.

.

Is scottish football any better now Edinburgh City have replaced East Stirlingshire. Would it be better if Talbot replaced Cowdenbeath or Bo'ness replaced Montrose.

Overall nothing would change as all current Junior clubs have nothing different or bigger to offer than current league teams

Yes every club has a level, but that changes constantly, which is kinda why we have we have promotion and relegation throughout the game. Indeed the vast majority of clubs in the country deal with these issues regularly, having an inclusive pyramid nearly introduces that to a few teaming clubs who can't go up or down.

 

And yes our game is better for having Edinburgh city being promoted rather than have east Stirlingshire struggling along. League 2 is better for having teams worry about relegation instead of being able to accept being horseshit for a season because they can just wipe the slate clean for the next one.

[Shanner]

Just now, Wile E Coyote said:

Because each club has a level due to resources, size of town etc. Celtic are not at the same level as Arsenal who in turn are not at the same level as Real Madrid.

Is scottish football any better now Edinburgh City have replaced East Stirlingshire. Would it be better if Talbot replaced Cowdenbeath or Bo'ness replaced Montrose.

Overall nothing would change as all current Junior clubs have nothing different or bigger to offer than current league teams

I didn't say the overall standard of Scottish football would be improved by the Juniors but I do think it would become more competitive at the lower levels, so yes, that would constitute an improvement. 

My view - which you're welcome to take or leave as you see fit - is that teams should be playing to reach the highest possible level and against as wide a range of their peers as possible rather than setting an artificial ceiling and boundaries on how far they can go.

Until such time as Junior sides "join the heard" any proclamations of ambition are always going to sound a bit hollow. 

[Burnie_man]

You and others like you have your thoughts i and many others have ours. This won't change we will never agree and that is indicative of junior football it will always be divided on this.. You can bleat on here for however long and hope for change some of us will just get on enjoying the great grade we have. Thanks and all the best 

That's a fairly lazy answer, you didn't address any of the points I made.

[Cyclizine]

Playing devil's advocate here, but say the situation was reversed and St Cuthbert, Threave and the like wanted to join the juniors, would they not be admitted to the West Region?

We're all saying that a three region pyramid would be optimal. Although I agree compared to the West Super Prem, the SoSL is poor, I can sort of see the SFA's argument that the SoSL is the senior non-league covering the West in the same way that the EoSL is in the East Region.

It's obviously not ideal, but you're always going to have clubs in the peripheries that are relatively remote. Short of kicking then out (unfair) then you have limited other options.

[Hillonearth]

41 minutes ago, Wile E Coyote said:

Because each club has a level due to resources, size of town etc. Celtic are not at the same level as Arsenal who in turn are not at the same level as Real Madrid.

Is scottish football any better now Edinburgh City have replaced East Stirlingshire. Would it be better if Talbot replaced Cowdenbeath or Bo'ness replaced Montrose.

Overall nothing would change as all current Junior clubs have nothing different or bigger to offer than current league teams

I reckon that's an important point - the simple fact is that eventual accession to the SPFL isn't all that appealing. Everyone harps on about Ross County as the touchstone of what can be achieved, but no-one ever mentions your Elgins, Annans and Peterheads who have achieved league status and have morphed into just what Scotland needed...yet more wee provincial sides seemingly destined to be permanent fixtures in the bottom league.

Barring a Mileson-esque sugar daddy writing the cheques - and remember how that ended - I reckon that's the level any junior side could hope to reach; the village and small-town teams like Talbot or Linlithgow just don't have the catchment areas to kick on to the next level - you can extend that to most of the current non-league seniors too; the likes of Innerleithen, Dalbeattie or Rosewell are way too small be able to support an SPFL side, and the likes of the Uni sides and boys' club offshoots are also unlikely to do so.

As for city teams, forget it - does Glasgow need another League side? Unlikely. Did Edinburgh? Ditto.

Probably the best placed current non-league side to potentially reach the next level are East Kilbride, coming as they do from a town of 75,000. Even they will be ultimately limited by the nature of the place though; EK's firmly a commuter town for Glasgow where people move to with allegiances already in place.

Scotland's a very different place from the likes of the USA where people tend to move somewhere and immediately go "Whoo! Go (insert name of local sports franchise) Maybe we should be more like them - it would make things a lot easier.

Edited July 11, 2017 by Hillonearth

[Cyclizine]

I reckon that's an important point - the simple fact is that eventual accession to the SPFL isn't all that appealing. Everyone harps on about Ross County as the touchstone of what can be achieved, but no-one ever mentions your Elgins, Annans and Peterheads who have achieved league status and have morphed into just what Scotland needed...yet more wee provincial sides seemingly destined to be permanent fixtures in the bottom league.
Barring a Mileson-esque sugar daddy writing the cheques - and remember how that ended - I reckon that's the level any junior side could hope to reach; the village and small-town teams like Talbot or Linlithgow just don't have the catchment areas to kick on to the next level - you can extend that to most of the current non-league seniors too; the likes of Innerleithen, Dalbeattie or Rosewell are way too small be able to support an SPFL side, and the likes of the Uni sides and boys' club offshoots are also unlikely to do so.
As for city teams, forget it - does Glasgow need another League side? Unlikely. Did Edinburgh? Ditto.
Probably the best placed current non-league side to potentially reach the next level are East Kilbride, coming as they do from a town of 75,000. Even they will be ultimately limited by the nature of the place though; EK's firmly a commuter town for Glasgow where people move to with allegiances already in place.
Scotland's a very different place from the likes of the USA where people tend to move somewhere and immediately go "Whoo! Go (insert name of local sports franchise) Maybe we should be more like them - it would make things a lot easier. [emoji4]

But for the vast majority of clubs, very little would change in a pyramid system. They'd still be playing local teams. Why should ambitious clubs be denied the opportunity to compete at higher levels and equally why should poor teams not fall to a sustainable level?