If I may make some observations from afar, might I suggest that the basic problem about attracting new teams and bolstering the 1st Division, even introducing a pyramid etc, is as follows.
For any such system to work, it is necessary to have 16? 18? 20? teams (minimum) which are all broadly competitive?
By which I mean not that each has an equal chance of winning the title etc, but that the worst team shouldn't be
that far off the best team (i.e. usually losing, but not by 5 or 6 goal hidings every time).
And since the Premier Division went full-time, that opened up a gap between Premier and First which is incredibly hard to bridge, unless FD clubs gamble and start spending money they don't have. And if/when they do, that makes it harder again for emerging clubs from further down to make the step-up to the FD.
Worse still, with the advent of big European prize money, there is even a danger of the PD dividing into "haves" and "have nots" (outliers like Bohs notwithstanding).
So that as things stand, ROI isn't capable of sustaining the number of stable, f-t clubs necessary to operate a pyramid incorporsting Promotion and Relegation, and to encourage emerging new entrants to come through etc.
I only say this because the Irish League, for all its other faults, esp lower standard of play, is able to sustain a successful and stable pyramid, with two Senior divisions and Internediate divisions feeding through to them and Junior league clubs having the opportunity to rise to Intermediate level. As a result, we have had far fewer clubs folding, while smaller (or newish) teams like Ballinamallard, Warrenpoint and Institute have been (broadly) able to hold their own.
But that has been achieved on the basis that all are/were effectively part-time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northe..._league_system
Of course, that is now under threat as several teams (Linfield, Crues, Glens, Larne, even Cliftonville?) are now f-t, or actively planning to get there. And with European money also beginning to skew the finances, we may end up with a situation closer to that in the LOI - but that's for the future, and I am reasonably confident that the existing structure and administration, which is relatively (emphasise) efficient, may mitigate the worst effects.
Of course if you were to take, say, the top 10 LOI clubs and add the top 8 IL clubs, you might have the basis of a working top tier, with a sufficient number of teams below able (just about) to sustain P&R etc.
Now why didn't somebody think of that before?
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