Is the Lowland League a vanity project?

 

The introduction of the expanded Scottish football pyramid was seen as a welcome and needed addition and a step towards modernisation for the game as a whole.

Relegation was added to the fourth tier for the first time in 2013. In 2020 the juniors joined the senior leagues, giving a chance to some of the largest supported clubs at the level the opportunity to rise through the divisions, and overtake some of the league clubs who had been stuck in a malaise of safety for years.

However, the southern iteration of the fifth tier has become a bit of a pariah in recent years, the Lowland League, formed in 2013 to be a sister league to the Highland League which encompasses the clubs at that level in the north of the country.

Firstly, while promotion and relegation to and from the Lowland/Highland League into the fourth tier, Scottish League Two, is possible the clubs face several obstacles designed to benefit the side bottom of tier 4 and restrict the rise of the teams below.

Rather than a straight swap of bottom of the league for the champions of another, the winners of the Highland and Lowland league must face off in a play-off against one-another, which is fair considering there is only one relegation spot available.

However, they then must play another two-legged play off against the team bottom of League Two, a team who failed consistently enough all season to finish bottom, not get a second chance against a team from below who were consistently good enough to win their respective division.

So, the Lowland League should have a right to feel victimised and hard done by? Wrong.

The Lowland League despite facing these obstacles themselves enforce similar obstacles on the junior leagues below to gain entry to the fifth tier.

Admittedly they are slightly less harsh, with the bottom side of their division at least being automatically relegated. But the playoffs remain for the league champions below, with the winners of the West and East of Scotland Premier Leagues and the South of Scotland League champions having to play each other once each with the top ranked side over three matches being promoted.

However, even that isn’t a given with promotion being denied last season to WoS champions Beith, due to a lack of a senior licence, leaving the Ayrshire side stuck at their current level.

When the junior side entered the pyramids in 2020 the clubs were evenly split into conferences to decide their division for the 2021/22 campaign, a perfect time for clubs to enter the league and earn their rightful place in the system with no room for argument.

But, of course, the following season the LL decided to offer a backdoor entry to the 5^th tier to the B sides of Rangers and Celtic and then again, the following year to the second-string side of fellow Premiership side Hearts, allowing these clubs to enter the now expanded division as ‘guest clubs’.

The B teams leapfrogged all those clubs in the divisions below, who had worked so hard the previous season to earn their place in the pyramid, much to the anger of both the clubs and especially the supporters at that level.

The B teams are also gridlocked into the division due to their ‘guest’ status, but they are very much uninvited guests to supporters and the two remaining B sides have long overstayed their already frosty welcomes.

Further developments that have caused mockery of the LL are the involvement of the Open Goal Podcast at Broomhill, a club who already receive ire due to being nomadic, having never played in the area they are named after and due to having a minimalistic supporter base due to this.

The partnership, introduced in 2022 saw the club embarrassingly be renamed and branded with the podcast’s moniker, podcast host Simon Ferry be implemented as manager, with his co-host Paul Slane being added to the playing squad, despite having been out the game for six years at the time.

Of course, they filmed a documentary of the season expecting immediate success, however rather fittingly the season, like the podcast was rather average.

The club finished 11^th of 19, failed to gain a supporter base and Slane only made a handful of unmemorable, fleeting appearances for the club with the partnership being cancelled after a year.

The club were left in the lurch by this, with no home ground or coaching staff, but it was easily avoidable had the league stepped in the year before, due to the obvious risks seen by the outside of this partnership.

Now we move on to this year’s embarrassment for the league, with yet another podcast involved, somewhat taking advantage of a club in need.

Albion Rovers, a league club for over a century before recent relegation to the LL, announced not long that for their match against Hearts B that weekend hat usual manager Sandy Clark would not be taking the team, but instead Duncan Mckay, a contributor for BBC’s podcast/show ‘A View from the Terrace’ will be taking them for this match, which by the way, isn’t a friendly, it is a full on league match. 

While this idea was scrapped soon after, following plenty of criticism the mere fact it got beyond a suggestion is a sign of where the league, and the clubs in it, are at.

The league has once again left themselves open to ridicule by allowing this farce to go ahead. The clubs should not have to turn to these sideshow publicity stunts to raise finance and safeguards should be in place from a league to avoid these types of stunts, but that’s the Lowland League for you, any publicity is good publicity in their eyes, despite how amateurish it may look.