National Conference League

[Spyro]

2 hours ago, O'Kelly Isley III said:

Great statement by Nairn, but we need more pressure from other clubs, especially via the supporters.  Some of our guys are holding back on season ticket renewals pending any voting process.

Unfortunately if your season tickets combined don’t come to 50k then LL club chairman are likely not to give a shit…. Loyalty counts for nothing and it’s easier to just go with the flow it seems

[San Starko Rover]

2 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

Just Golspie and Fort William up here I think, Fort might vote Yes just to be bolshie.

Won’t Banks O Dee have a vote? They’ve been licenced a while now.  

[Burnieman]

14 minutes ago, San Starko Rover said:

Any idea how many total voters there are? Obviously the top 5 tiers is 76 votes.  But how many votes are held by historic members, SWPL, EOSFL etc.  interesting to know how many clubs / organisations are needed to vote it through or block it. 

I don't know total, but there's probably around 14-15 "grandfather rights" holders eg Girvan, Hawick RA, Glasgow Uni, Golspie etc.

[Burnieman]

2 minutes ago, San Starko Rover said:

Won’t Banks O Dee have a vote? They’ve been licenced a while now.  

Yes, them and Linlithgow Rose were pre-2018.

[welshbairn]

4 minutes ago, San Starko Rover said:

Won’t Banks O Dee have a vote? They’ve been licenced a while now.  

They're already counted in tier 5, got promoted this season.

Edited April 29, 2023 by welshbairn

[San Starko Rover]

Just now, welshbairn said:

They're already counted in tier 5.

Of course they are, should have realised that one. 

[welshbairn]

21 minutes ago, EdinburghBlue said:

Extremely worrying comments from the WoSFL chair about ‘this happening’ on Sam North’s video on last night’s WoSFL Cup final. 

I suspect there are a lot of Rangers and Celtic minded blazers down there anxious to do their big teams a favour.

[PossilYM]

15 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

I suspect there are a lot of Rangers and Celtic minded blazers down there anxious to do their big teams a favour.

Celtic minded?

In Ayrshire

[welshbairn]

Just now, PossilYM said:

Celtic minded?

In Ayrshire

I was trying to be ecumenical with my contempt..

[LongTimeLurker]

365k views for this so far:

 

[Highland ITFC]

3 hours ago, San Starko Rover said:

SFA and SPFL are an incompetent mess that really need gutting, Scottish football is so badly run from top to bottom with everything done to suit two teams and this B team nonsense just illustrates that point. I’m 100% against B teams and that includes the ones in Non League.  One club, one team but if they are going to allow them they should certainly have to start at the bottom of the pyramid.  They’ve no right to jump the Ex Junior clubs many of whom reluctantly joined the set up.

The sad thing here is the pyramid has the potential to be a good thing and the Lowland League could be a great league if they’d open up the bottlenecks at Tiers 4 and 5. Scottish football is never going to be on the level of the big boys of Europe but it’s certainly capable of far more than the current shambles of self interest.  It’s well supported with good attendance per head of population, there’s some really good rivalries across the country between passionate fan bases.  Sadly the SFA and SPFL are only interested in selling as many Old Firm games as possible to SKY TV, the last Edinburgh Derby wasn’t even televised. 

What’s badly needed is leadership who want to work on a product for Tiers 1-10 and promote our game at every level, the current mob want Celtic and Rangers winning the Premiership with their B teams winning the Championship what a terrible product for everyone outside those two clubs. It’s almost like Maxwell and Doncaster believe fans of the other clubs are just Old Firm fans without the bus fare and are delighted to see them. 

Yup, spot on! A quick scan of the National League, NLN & NLS in England shows c.20 former football league clubs that have dropped down, & accordingly their places taken by ambitious clubs coming up from the lower leagues. The stellar example of this is Dorking Wanderers, who since being formed in 1999 have climbed from the Crawley & District League to the National League, England's Tier 5.

This kind of opportunity for natural fluidity should also exist in the Scottish game, & what is needed is a proper plan to implement real promotion & relegation flow throughout the pyramid, either as it currently stands, or maybe with a restructuring of the number of clubs in divisions / leagues if that's what an open & transparent review showed to be the preferred option. Imagine opening up this consultation for fans to be able to give input aswell? What an opportunity for real buy-in & 'ownership' from Scotland's football fanbase.

In the meantime, if one of the social media / forum fan groups that is leading / hosting objection to the current conference plan was to draft up a consistent form of words / statement laying out the key issues with it, & then make this available to fans to all email or tweet to the SFA, then with potential tens of thousands of the same message received, they'd maybe start to appreciate the strength of feeling & groundswell of opinion against this 'Frankenstein' league that would effectively serve to relegate the majority of the countries football clubs in one fell swoop! 

[welshbairn]

19 minutes ago, Highland ITFC said:

n the meantime, if one of the social media / forum fan groups that is leading / hosting objection to the current conference plan was to draft up a consistent form of words / statement laying out the key issues with it, & then make this available to fans to all email or tweet to the SFA, then with potential tens of thousands of the same message received, they'd maybe start to appreciate the strength of feeling & groundswell of opinion against this 'Frankenstein' league that would effectively serve to relegate the majority of the countries football clubs in one fell swoop! 

@Div

[O'Kelly Isley III]

1 hour ago, PossilYM said:

Celtic minded?

In Ayrshire

Have you been in Saltcoats ??

[Bad Wolf]

1 hour ago, PossilYM said:

Celtic minded?

In Ayrshire

There are not too many Orcs to be found at St Joseph's Academy in Kilmarnock, for example. I'm not accusing you of this personally, but I do detect a narrative on some threads on here wherein Celtic fans desperately cling on to "oppressed minority" status as it works well for them. So well, in fact, that Parkhead crowds are 20% bigger than their equally delightful rival. Statistically, there will be just as many blazers in the LL and below whose big team is the other cheek.

[Bad Wolf]

Anyhow, tangents aside, I was somewhat heartened when reading the Nairn statement earlier. I suspect I may be less heartened when the floodgates fail to open.

[craigkillie]

2 hours ago, PossilYM said:

Celtic minded?

In Ayrshire

Plenty of Celtic-leaning areas in Ayrshire.

[craigkillie]

15 hours ago, welshbairn said:

You think you'd find 6 Highland League teams happy to play 2/3rds of away games in Lowland League territory? For a place in tier 5, where they already are? I just don't get why full time professional footballers signed by Rangers and Celtic would benefit from playing part-timers 4 or 5 tiers below anyway.

I've often thought that the best approach for a national 5th tier to bridge the gap a wee bit between League 2 and the HL/LL would be a 12 team league featuring a "Highland Conference" with 6 teams and a "Lowland Conference" with 6 teams. Play every team in your own conference twice home and away (20 games) and every team in the other conference once home and away (12 games). Team with the most points overall goes up automatically, then some sort of play-off format involving the winners/runners-up of each conference and the second bottom team in League 2.

[welshbairn]

11 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

I've often thought that the best approach for a national 5th tier to bridge the gap a wee bit between League 2 and the HL/LL would be a 12 team league featuring a "Highland Conference" with 6 teams and a "Lowland Conference" with 6 teams. Play every team in your own conference twice home and away (20 games) and every team in the other conference once home and away (12 games). Team with the most points overall goes up automatically, then some sort of play-off format involving the winners/runners-up of each conference and the second bottom team in League 2.

Sounds fine on paper but it would kill off the fun of the Highland League, just once away and once at home is far better than 4 times a season and seeing how lowly Clach perform against the big boys is part of it. To make a decent sized HL2 you'd need to poach teams from below which would damage the North Caley especially, who struggle for numbers. 

[craigkillie]

I'm not a Highland League fan, so maybe it's not my place to comment, but the current set-up doesn't seem that interesting to me for a fan of the middling clubs. Even if you went to a 16 team league below it, that would only require 4 additional clubs for the Highland League, so you'd only see the North Caley losing a single team most likely.

Edited April 29, 2023 by craigkillie

[welshbairn]

16 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

I'm not a Highland League fan, but the current set-up doesn't seem that interesting to me for a fan of the middling clubs. Even if you went to a 16 team league below it, that would only require 4 additional clubs for the Highland League, so you'd only see the North Caley losing a single team most likely.

As fan of low to middling Clach taking the top 6 out of the league would probably make me start following a North Caley team instead. I don't think you'd find enough takers in the top 6 anyway. 

P. S. It would be a bit like a middling team fan in the EPL with the top teams all buggering off to the European Superleague. 

Edited April 29, 2023 by welshbairn