Top 4 to get byes to the last 16 of the Scottish Cup

[craigkillie]

The preliminary rounds are starting to get jam-packed with all the new clubs getting licensed, so I've said a few times before that this could be sorted out by just putting the remaining 4 Championship clubs into Round 3 instead of Round 4. No need to tweak anything else, yet it would open up the competition proper to many more clubs.

[Ginaro]

17 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

The preliminary rounds are starting to get jam-packed with all the new clubs getting licensed, so I've said a few times before that this could be sorted out by just putting the remaining 4 Championship clubs into Round 3 instead of Round 4. No need to tweak anything else, yet it would open up the competition proper to many more clubs.

So what would this table look like if that happened - 20 round 3 fixtures, what about rounds 1 and 2?

[craigkillie]

Last year there were 102 entrants, of which 75 receive automatic entry into the competition proper (42 SPFL, 17 HL, 16 LL). That left 27 clubs from other leagues (either licensed clubs or qualifiers). This number varies slightly, but not too much, though you'd expect it to increase in the coming years as more EoS sides become licensed and potentially the West Juniors join.

Using this year as an example, you could have:

Preliminary Round - 8 teams
Round 1 - 52 teams (4 Preliminary Round winners + 19 byes + 15 HL + 14 LL)
Round 2 - 40 teams (26 R2 winners  + 10 League 2 + 2 HL + 2 LL)
Round 3 - 40 teams (20 R2 winners + 10 Championship + 10 League 1)
Round 4 - 32 teams (20 R3 winners + 12 Premiership)