At the Special General Meeting of the WoSFL that was held on March 1^st, the member clubs agreed to accept the amendments to the Constitution to allow the handover of administration from the Scottish Lowland Football League to a new Board formed by the clubs.

Retiring Chairman, Dave McKenna outlined the work the Interim Management Group (IMG) had undertaken over the course of the past year and highlighted that the WoSFL was now in a position to take on the responsibility of managing its’ own affairs.

He thanked George Fraser, Chairman of the Scottish Lowland Football League (SLFL) and David Baxter, Secretary of the SLFL for their support and also members of the Interim Management Group for their work over the past year and expressed his thanks to Andrew Sinclair (Girvan) and Alex Smith (Kello Rovers) who have not put themselves forward for election to the new Board.

The new WoSFL Board were then accepted and the following took up their new roles.

Chair – Matt Bamford (Clydebank), Vice-Chair – Colin Boyd (Kilwinning Rangers), Treasurer – Chris McKillop (Port Glasgow Juniors), General Secretary – John Dalton (Whitletts Victoria), Discipline Secretary – Jeff Hunt (Pollok), Fixture Secretary – Kennie Young (Neutral), Divisional Representatives – Peter Ferguson (Rutherglen Glencairn), Kevin Robertson (Neilston), Bobby Macnamara (Ardrossan Winton Rovers), Martin McKenna (St Anthony’s) and Ian Young (Glenafton Athletic).

New Chairman, Matt Bamford, thanked Dave McKenna and Andrew Waddell for all their hard work and endeavours to get us to where we are today and wished them well as they returned to their normal positions with the SLFL.

West of Scotland Football League hereafter referred to as WoSFL.

Scottish Lowland Football League hereafter referred to as SLFL.

Special General Meeting hereafter referred to as SGM.

Interim Management Group hereafter referred to as IMG.

I have received an application signed by 10 clubs requesting a SGM in accordance with the current Constitution and Rules.

6.6 Special General Meetings

6.6.1 Member Clubs shall have power to call a Special General Meeting. A Special General Meeting will be called on receipt of a requisition signed by ten Full Member Clubs within fourteen days after such requisition has been received. The requisition must state the business for which the meeting is called and this is the only business that can be concluded at the Special General Meeting concerned. Each Full Member Club whose subscription for the current season has been paid shall be entitled to send two representatives to all Special General Meetings.

That SGM will take place on Monday 1^st March 2021 at 7PM and will be by Zoom due to the Covid restrictions.

Business of the meeting.

1) Proposals to alter the Constitution and Rules of the WoSFL.

2) Election of Management Board to facilitate handover from SLFL.

3) Election of representatives to the Scottish FA Non Professional Game Board and the Scottish FA Congress.

History and purpose behind the 3 items on the agenda.

The WoSFL was set up by the SLFL in 2020 and the Constitution and Rules was set up to allow administration of the League. People from within the membership were co-opted onto a sub-committee of the SLFL to look after that administration. In line with the constitution, I was also co-opted as a neutral to take up the position of Secretary.

Dave McKenna was appointed as Chair and Andrew Waddell was appointed as Treasurer.

That sub-committee took up the name of Interim Management Group of the WoSFL.

4 Governance

4.1 The governance and business of the League will rest with the Board of the Scottish Lowland Football League until such time as the Board and Office Bearers are elected, no later than March 2021.

In accordance with the above Rule the SLFL are handing over Governance to the WoSFL membership and the SGM has been called to facilitate the handover. During their time of administration of the WoSFL the IMG have identified that certain rules within the Constitution and Rules would not suit the needs of the WoSFL and would hamper the progress of the League. We have 67 clubs in membership and that looks likely to increase. We believe that the WoSFL would be better served by 3 secretaries rather than just 1 and therefore propose that we should have a General Secretary, a Discipline Secretary and a Fixture Secretary. We also appreciate that finding the right people to fulfil the Office Bearer roles of the 3 Secretaries and a Treasurer that are not already connected to a member club and are unwilling to give up their role with their club would be nigh on impossible, so we are also proposing that these roles are open to anyone as long as they are proposed and seconded by member clubs. In all likelihood the people with the knowledge and experience required will be with a club so we need the Constitution and Rules altered to allow us to elect the right people for the roles.

The proposed changes have been attached to the message sent to the Club Secretaries and can also be found on the Club Admin Site.

The second item on the agenda will be to form the Management Board of the WoSFL.

Anyone interested in any of the positions on the Board (Chair, Vice-Chair, General Secretary, Discipline Secretary, Fixture Secretary, Treasurer or Club Representative) should fill in the form to be found on the website. It can be found here – West of Scotland Football League (wosfl.co.uk) under Join the WOSFL.

Apply for the WOSFL Board (google.com)

The closing date and time for applications is Monday 22^nd February 2021 at 8PM.

The applications will then be processed and put forward for the SGM.

A full agenda with the proposals, candidates and procedure will be sent out with the invite to the meeting to all club secretaries prior to the meeting.

The third item will be to elect representatives from the new Board to the Scottish FA Non Professional Game Board and the Scottish FA Congress.

The SGM will be closed following the election of the Board and a General Meeting will then take place to allow discussion on a few topics that need addressed.

Kennie Young

Secretary

IMG of PDM Buildbase WoSFL

There appears to be a bit of confusion around our targets for the completion of the Leagues.

I have received some messages regarding this and also seen some online comments and newspaper reports, so for a bit of clarity here’s a bit of information for everyone.

We are not intending to get to 50% and then stop playing. The main aim is to play as many games as the time will allow.
If we can get 100% of the games played then that will be the target, but only if we have the time to fit in all the fixtures.

All games that have already been played will be counted.
This includes cases where teams have met twice (H & A).
The second target is to get as quickly as possible to a point where all teams in each league will have played each other at LEAST once, either at home or away. There will be cases where some teams will be meeting for the second time yet they have still got others to play for the first time. This happens because their first time opponents are already playing someone that they’ve not played, and it is preferable to keep all teams playing where possible rather than have 2 teams sitting idle that could be playing each other.
Kennie Young
Secretary – IMG of WoSFL

Suspension of Football Update 29 January | News | Scottish FA

On the back of the recent announcements from the Scottish Government regarding the need to increase the restrictions as we enter Tier 4 nationwide, the IMG of the WoSFL have, after a long and thought-provoking discussion, decided that we will no longer accept any requests for friendly matches until such times as we feel it appropriate to re-introduce them. In line with the SG’s guidelines this will take effect from Boxing Day 2020. Any friendlies that have already been arranged after 25th December will be postponed.
We will be instructing the Referee Department and the SFA Events Department of this decision.

I have the full list ready to be published. However, due to a small technical issue with this website they cannot be published at the moment. I hope this issue will be resolved soon and I am aiming to get them issued before the end of the week.

Kennie Young, Secretary, IMG of WoSFL

Saturday’s game between Beith and Clydebank has been cancelled as a Premier Division league game and will now go ahead as the Soccer Shop Challenge Cup tie that was postponed yesterday.