mikey Posted July 10, 2012 Share Posted July 10, 2012 A question for some of you. When the SFA were talking league reconstruction, they were discussing the open gangway for ambitious clubs outside the SFL. However, my question is this; how ambitious are any of these clubs? We've seen some junior clubs from the North Region join the Highland League but the lowland teams seem happy where they are. Is there any genuine desire from these clubs to play in the SFL, from somebody big like Linlithgow or Auchinleck? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members bAzTNM#1 Posted July 11, 2012 Paid Members Share Posted July 11, 2012 Junior sides haven't applied to enter the SFL in about fifty years. Was Clydebank not the last one in the 60s? These kind of applications are normally filled up with your Cove Rangers, Whitehill Welfare, Edinburgh Citys of the world. Â Auchinleck Talbot probably pull in more money in the Junior ranks than anybody in Div2 or 3. They'd lose money by going into Division 3. Better to be a big fish in a small pond and all that. Â Don't know about Linlithgow. Not an expert in the East Region. Â I'd be all for the champs of the West Region Superleague to enter Division 3. Would be Irvine Meadow this year. Â ADDED: Don't forget that most stadiums in the West Region are absolute dives. Even Petershill is just a sports centre's 3G park and they finished second in the Superleague. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kenny McBride Posted July 11, 2012 Share Posted July 11, 2012 Junior football is totally bizarre. It's easy to forget how big some of those clubs are in terms of support because the games barely get covered in the mainstream media (I mean, not even box scores, never mind actual coverage of games) and players only cross over into senior teams very rarely. My uncle, for example, was a pretty high level junior player as a young man and most thought he could have made a decent career as a senior player but he just had no interest in it. He wanted to play in the juniors and that was that. Â Having said that, I think we need to have a unified structure. We're too small a country to have so many different organisations running our football and we can't afford to have one chunk of our football (arguably the most important chunk at community level) completely divorced from the "big" clubs. If it takes Rangers becoming a junior club to get those changes starting to happen then it will all have been worth it in the end. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members bAzTNM#1 Posted July 11, 2012 Paid Members Share Posted July 11, 2012 Glasgow junior football is dying though. Apart from the Superleague, and Clydebank, the rest of the attendances are absolutely shocking. No money in it. Â Ayrshire region, I believe, is thriving. Â ADDED: Junior football attracts a ton of nutters and gangsters for some reason too. Been to a few Clydebank games at Holm Park and they seem to attract a lot of the shaven headed, abusive type fan, necking cans of super-lager under their jacket. One side of it I hate. Â Even the Shettleston manager, Hugh Kelly, challenged me to a fight because I was taking pictures of their stadium. His fat mate stopped him from getting near me. Very bizarre incident. Maybe he thought I was the Social. Despise that club. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prince Nana Posted July 11, 2012 Share Posted July 11, 2012 I thought Linlithgow Rose were one of the clubs to complain about the possibility of rangers joining the sfl without 3 years accounts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikey Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Junior football is totally bizarre. It's easy to forget how big some of those clubs are in terms of support because the games barely get covered in the mainstream media (I mean, not even box scores, never mind actual coverage of games) and players only cross over into senior teams very rarely. My uncle, for example, was a pretty high level junior player as a young man and most thought he could have made a decent career as a senior player but he just had no interest in it. He wanted to play in the juniors and that was that. Having said that, I think we need to have a unified structure. We're too small a country to have so many different organisations running our football and we can't afford to have one chunk of our football (arguably the most important chunk at community level) completely divorced from the "big" clubs. If it takes Rangers becoming a junior club to get those changes starting to happen then it will all have been worth it in the end.  That sort of thing happens when there's a hard line between pro football and semi-pro/amateur. My dad was a left back and he topped out in the then-amateur ranks, equivalent of Conference now, because he didn't train hard enough. Had there been an open gangway, he might have played for a league club but he had no interest in chasing a pro contract.  I've long said that if you pay players or aspire to pay players, you should be a direct member of the SFA and be assigned to an approved SFA league which sits in a Scottish football pyramid. If you don't pay players and never want to pay players, you should be a member of the SAFA and playing in an SAFA league. It's frankly insane that there are teams that are near neighbours who never play because, say, one team is playing welfare football and the other is playing amateur or one team is a junior team and one is a senior. Scottish football is essentially an exercise in shooting yourself in the foot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrK Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Henry Clarson Blog  Nail on Head.       If the link works. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keith Houchen Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Lisbon Lion, Joe McBride has passed away, aged 74. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prince Nana Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Henry Clarson Blog Nail on Head.       If the link works.  brillant Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Carbomb Posted July 12, 2012 Paid Members Share Posted July 12, 2012 Meanwhile, despite running up the longest series of consecutive 0-3 defeats in the history of football, Rangers were awarded the championship titles on five occasions during this period, thus enabling the SPL to divert millions of pounds of prize money away from the rightful league winners and into the colossal overdraft of the mythical economic powerhouse. The SFA, hoping for a red bicycle, duly notified UEFA that Rangers would represent Scotland in the Champions league in the following season. Tens of millions of pounds worth of prize money would never reach the club which had really earned that place by playing the game according to the rules. Five seasons of SPL and Champions League prize money take the damage up to the quarter of a billion pound mark. Yet the economic powerhouse still went bust. Â Did this actually happen? What did the SPL do to make it happen? Did they deduct points from the rightful winner or something? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keith Houchen Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Basically, because of the Rangers finances, the games in the period should have been 3-0 walkovers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Carbomb Posted July 12, 2012 Paid Members Share Posted July 12, 2012 Basically, because of the Rangers finances, the games in the period should have been 3-0 walkovers. Â Sorry, feeling very dim today - not had my tea yet. I'm not sure I follow - do you mean that these are games that should've been forfeited as the standard 0-3 for the state of their finances? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keith Houchen Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Basically, because of the Rangers finances, the games in the period should have been 3-0 walkovers. Â Sorry, feeling very dim today - not had my tea yet. I'm not sure I follow - do you mean that these are games that should've been forfeited as the standard 0-3 for the state of their finances? Yep, sorry I wasn't clear. There wasn't some Russo style swerves or Dusty finishes to the games in question. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Carbomb Posted July 12, 2012 Paid Members Share Posted July 12, 2012 Basically, because of the Rangers finances, the games in the period should have been 3-0 walkovers. Â Sorry, feeling very dim today - not had my tea yet. I'm not sure I follow - do you mean that these are games that should've been forfeited as the standard 0-3 for the state of their finances? Yep, sorry I wasn't clear. There wasn't some Russo style swerves or Dusty finishes to the games in question. Would be brilliant if there were. Thanks for that, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrK Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Basically, because of the Rangers finances, the games in the period should have been 3-0 walkovers. Â Sorry, feeling very dim today - not had my tea yet. I'm not sure I follow - do you mean that these are games that should've been forfeited as the standard 0-3 for the state of their finances? Yep, sorry I wasn't clear. There wasn't some Russo style swerves or Dusty finishes to the games in question. Would be brilliant if there were. Thanks for that, though. Â Â It's a complicated situation that has pretty much been forgotten about the last couple of months due to the liquidation and everything that has gone with it. Â Rangers were found guilty of using an Emplyee Benefit Trust (EBT) in a manner that HMRC viewed illegal. Rangers appealed this decision and at the moment there has been no outcome to the appeal. If the appeal had failed and Rangers still existed then the SFA/SPL would have had a bigger problem on their hands than they have currently. Their rules state that any player paid by more than one contract is considered ineligible and therefor any match they play in is awarded as a 3-0 win to the opposition. Â What the authorities would do considering Rangers had paid a lot of their staff via EBTs for nearly 10 years is anyone's guess? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.