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[Fm 13] Scottish Non-League expansion (real)


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The Scottish football system is amongst the most fractured with four (or 5) distinct levels which are senior, senior non-league, junior, amateur and welfare (pretty much the same as amateur so whether it can be considered different is up for debate). These levels are for the most part seperate from each other with the exception of the Scottish Cup, Challenge Cup and certain cup competitions at the regional level. This fractured system can be traced back as far back as the 1880's which is detailed here. The senior levels (SPL etc) and senior non-league are in direct control of the SFA with the junior league controls by the SJFA (Scottish Junior Football Association) Amateur/welfare leagues are controlled by the SAFA (Scottish Amateur Football Association) (one exception is the North Caledonian league which is directly controlled by the SFA). The difference between the levels (excluding on a financial level) is up for debate as the bigger teams out with the SPL/SFL are known to out attend some second and third division teams. I'd also argue as well the South Of Scotland League despite being a step above is weaker than the Junior leagues and in all reality the gap between Junior and senior-non league is not that great. The pyramid can be summed as follows:

Senior

SPL

First Division

Second Division

Third Division

No relegation exists to the non-leagues. Non-league teams can only join the Senior ranks if a place appears by a team a folding etc or the league expands and then apply for membership.

Senior Non-League

Highland League (Highland region and also teams from Moray and Grampian)

East Of Scotland (Lothian and Scottish Borders)

South Of Scotland (Dumfries And Galloway - Ayrshire teams have taken part in the past)

The East Of Scotland also has a second division. Several teams at this level were once also junior teams and teams moving up a step happens every so often. Some teams such as Duns and Burntisland made the jump straight from the amateur ranks in the past few seasons.

Junior

Three regions

North (Grampian, Moray and Highland)

East (Angus, Tayside, Fife, Perthshire, Stirlingshire, Lothian and Central Scotland

Central (Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, Ayrshire, Glasgow and Central Scotland)

This 3 region setup came about in 2002 as a result of merging from it's six previous regions that existed from 1968. This old setup can still be seen in the lower tiers of the East (South - Lothian, Central - Fife/Perthshire and North - Angus/Tayside) West (Central and Ayrshire)

Amateur/welfare

Way too many to name and I've only included one in the pyramid, the North Caledonian League due to it being controlled by the SFA, being well known as a stepping stone to the Highland League or North Juniors and also having a reserve team of a Highland League team.

Cups

Scottish Cup

Despite being a nationwide comp not all teams automatically take part. The teams participating can be broken down as follows (prior to 08 non SPL/SFL teams had to play in qualifying rounds but these have been scrapped thus they now enter automatically at the 1st round)

All 42 SPL/SFL members

SFA members from the Senior Non-Leagues

Non-members can qualify by winning their respective division (the runner up of the Highland League can also qualify via this method)

The Winners of each of the top flight of the three Junior Region top flights and the Junior Cup winner

Girvan (despite being a Junior team they are due to historic anomolys a full SFA member and a full SJFA member)

Two amateur teams (Glasgow University and Golspie Sutherland)

Scottish League Cup

All 42 senior SPL/SFL Teams

Scottish Challenge Cup

All teams from the 1st to 3rd division plus winner and runner up of Highland League (in reality HL teams are chosen on a licensing criteria and a team can't appear two seasons in a row but since this is not possible I felt this the best alternative)

Scottish Junior Cup

All Junior teams

Below these lie a variety of cups in each of the regions and also some which are cross regional and even take in teams from different levels.

Reserves/U19's

Customs reserves for all SPL/SFL teams (excluding Berwick who'se reserves play in the EoS). Setup differs from reality but had to create on in order to free up first teams from certain cup comps e.g. North Of Scotland Cup and Southern Challenge Cup. Also allows for addition of the historic 'shire cups (Fife, Tayside and Fofarshire) and the Glasgow City Cup.

U19's are set by parent division and applies to all playable teams as in reality U19 leagues exist across these teams.

Other

Prize money where possible

Competition histories (both current and extinct comps.)

New citys,towns,villages

Regional boundaries set

Media

Co-ordinates/local regions/populations fixed where wrong

Team colours for those without (at playable levels)

Missing stadia assigned/created

Known issues

Regionalisation has been done to the best of my ability but teams still do move but there is nothing drastic and at most teams move across sub region eg Ayrshire to Central rather than outwith the region completely. This is in part due to the Junior East and West region boundaries not being concrete as some West teams play further east than some east region teams and vice versa.

Some cups are split on regional grounds in earlier rounds, this isn't possible in the editor

The Central Sectional Cup has an amateur rank team taking part, I had to do this as the editor doesn't allow for different number of teams in groups in cups. This competition usually works with 40 teams but one Junior West team, Stonehouse Violet folded earlier this year. The same kind of situation also applies to other sectional cups.

In reality trialists are allowed to play in a limited number of league games in SFL3 however I have not been able to replicate this whilst rebuilding.

SPL/SFL match bans don't apply till after 6 games so as the editor can not go this high I set it to the max of 5.

Finances are still unstable at lower end non-league teams. Still trying to find a solution for this.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Latest

V 0.2 (7/2/13)

Older

Preview Version, for observation only

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Ah this looks very interesting having played for a few junior teams in ayrshire myself.I agree what you said about the junior and senior-non league alot of junior teams do have a big following.I would also say the top junior teams in scotland would do fine in the sfl league 3 and even 2 a will keep an eye out on this cheers pal :applause:

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The cups still aren't finished, there is about three minimum per region.

As for the amateur leagues I could do them but simply put it'd mean adding well over 50 leagues and given that the file already had 11 levels it'd be overkill/slow the game down for no real value. I will allow you to do your own version with the amateur leagues

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@lo.simon

I've just finished up the cups (well the ones I could - some I have been unable to do due to editor limitiations such as the East of Scotland City Cup and some are confusing the hell out of me - see the variety of SoS cups). As for the Amateurs I may include the most prominent from each region, currently undecided though. The next step is to update histories where I haven't already and also go about doing this for extinct competitions.

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The leagues and cups are built. Currently taking on the laborious task of adding histories for extinct competitions (where I can find information) which is coming in at close to 200 new additions. So far I've completed this for Junior leagues and cups + senior leagues. About 1/3 of the way through senior cups so expect another preview file (maybe BETA) within the next 2 to 3 days.

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Take a look here mate http://scottish-football-historical-archive.com/

Also have a look at this and see if cups still run

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/160219-Scottish-Football-the-Real-McCoy?highlight=scottish

as you don't have any South of Scotland Cups in your database ??

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Just to update I've finished the histories for extinct competitions and now doing the same for current cups. This may take a couple of days as the histories are actually pretty hard to find for some competitions.

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I had to do the above due to hard coded dates in the editor which wouldn't allow me to set up the season properly and also to set up independent reserve teams to take part in certain historic county cups and to provide a league for them.

Also the prize money is based upon an equal divide of the current tv deal of 16 million between the 12 teams (the actual tv money format is complex and impossible to replicate and has somewhat of a bias towards the old firm)

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I had to do the above due to hard coded dates in the editor which wouldn't allow me to set up the season properly and also to set up independent reserve teams to take part in certain historic county cups and to provide a league for them.

Also the prize money is based upon an equal divide of the current tv deal of 16 million between the 12 teams (the actual tv money format is complex and impossible to replicate and has somewhat of a bias towards the old firm)

OK, but what hardcoded dates did you need to overwrite. I don't quite get the TV deal bit but I read it was more near £13m per team rather than £1.3m. Also you can set up independent reserve teams in the extra teams panel if you change it to reserve team, allowing you to make the cups and have the current reserves structure.

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That was a mistake on my part and an oversight, I would start over and use the hardcoded league but I've made too many changes to go back now. As for the tv deal I've found a figure of 80 million over five years so dividing that by five and then by twelve brings it out as 1333333 (this was based on what I'm reading)

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That was a mistake on my part and an oversight, I would start over and use the hardcoded league but I've made too many changes to go back now. As for the tv deal I've found a figure of 80 million over five years so dividing that by five and then by twelve brings it out as 1333333 (this was based on what I'm reading)

OK. So on next years version you'll just add to the hardcoded system? That's great.

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next year depends a lot on what shape re-structuring takes and if the data will be salvageable.

I'm hoping to release this next week albeit with missing competition histories which I've struggled to find information on. I'll also be doing alternate fictional pyramid structure as well in near future using this as a base file.

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Version 0.2 now up and ready.

Changes

Added further histories/new competitions (where I couldn't find history I added at least the last winner and runner up)

Added prize money at non-league level (mostly fictional but also realistic)

Created amateur leagues and teams (non-playable for now)

New cities added

Added the Gaelic language and set it to communities where it is the majority language

General tweaks

Download link

Only issue is finances are a still bit unstable at lower end non-league teams

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Great work no Renfrewshire Cup though ??

Renfrewshire Cup

St Mirren

Morton

and 2 local teams

Golspie not in the North of Scotland Cup they got beat in the 1st round Golspie Sutherland F.C. 0-4 Brora Rangers F.C.

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Cant seem to open this mate with winrar,whats the installation instructions,looks really good btw m8!!!!

Version 0.2 now up and ready.

Changes

Added further histories/new competitions (where I couldn't find history I added at least the last winner and runner up)

Added prize money at non-league level (mostly fictional but also realistic)

Created amateur leagues and teams (non-playable for now)

New cities added

Added the Gaelic language and set it to communities where it is the majority language

General tweaks

Download link

Only issue is finances are a still bit unstable at lower end non-league teams

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