Mapped out

SCOTTISH PYRAMID

Hearts and Celtic’s Premiership title race wasn’t the only compelling league battle in Scotland this year. The Lowland League and Highland League were both decided on the last day, with Linlithgow Rose edging past Clydebank, and Brora Rangers pipping Brechin City by one point.

But both champions missed out on promotion into the SPFL. Brora lost 3-1 on aggregate to Edinburgh City in the League Two play-offs, while Linlithgow didn’t hold the bronze standard SFA licence that they needed to contest the play-offs. But despite that lack of promotion, neither of those two tier five title-race rivalries will be rekindled in the new season, because of league reconstruction.

The Lowland League – in the latest chapter of the rapid evolution of the Scottish league pyramid structure – is splitting into East and West divisions, each with 16 member clubs, plus Celtic B as a guest team in the West.

The reconstruction is essentially an expansion of the Lowland League, and with the West including the far south of Scotland and the East creeping up the coast beyond Dundee, it mostly makes geographical sense. At the next level down, the South of Scotland League joins the West of Scotland League (WoSFL) feeding into the Lowland League West, while the Midlands League, covering Tayside and East of Scotland League, will sit below the Lowland League East.

Because of the East’s northwards expansion, Brechin are moving from the Highland League to the Lowland League East – a change that they’ve sought since they were relegated from the SPFL. So there will still be some long journeys, like the 125 miles between Gala Fairydean Rovers and Brechin.

Gala, the town in the Borders where football comes closest to being as big as rugby, were founder members of the Lowland League in 2013, when there were just 12 member clubs. They have ambitions to gain promotion to the SPFL. “The decision to split the Lowland League into East and West vindicates the success of the pyramid system,” says club secretary Robert Fairburn. “A longstanding complaint was the lack of opportunities for promotion but with two clubs possibly being relegated from the East and also the West, that can’t be argued now.’

The champions of the tier six divisions will be automatically promoted if they have an entry-level SFA licence. Unfortunately there won’t be the same increased opportunity for promotion from tier five, where the league winners will still play off against each other for the right to play against the bottom team from League Two for one SPFL place.

Fairburn agrees with the consensus that the promotion route should be wider: “There should be an automatic relegation for club 42 from the SPFL to be replaced by a tier five club. And there should be a play-off involving other clubs from tier five and club 41 from the SPFL. But there’s no appetite for that from within the SPFL.”

As part of the reconstruction, the South of Scotland League moves from tier five to tier six, which is a more logical level for this longstanding division. But they lose two of their best clubs, as Dalbeattie Star and Newton Stewart step up to the Lowland League West. The league was getting dangerously low on numbers, but have recently had three new additions: Saltire City, from – counterintuitively – Glasgow, Annan Athletic’s “community” side and Gretna Under-20s.

The biggest area of change is the addition of nine WoSFL clubs stepping up to the Lowland League West, including Auchinleck Talbot and Cumnock Juniors from Ayrshire and Pollok from south Glasgow – big clubs at this level, who formerly played in the Junior leagues before recently moving en masse to the senior lower leagues.

There’s now a very rich combination of clubs across both Lowland Leagues, many of them with long histories. As well as the former Juniors in both divisions, there are several former SPFL clubs, like Albion Rovers in the West and Brechin, East Stirling, Cowdenbeath and Berwick Rangers in the East. Cowdenbeath also acquire a new hyper-local derby, against Hill of Beath Hawthorn, less than two miles away. Expect Brechin to push Linlithgow Rose, Bonnyrigg Rose and Tranent in the East, while Clydebank should still be favourites in the West, but Auchinleck Talbot in particular will be expected to challenge. Mark Poole