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There's another reorganisation happening in the Scottish game. I don't understand all the details but the Lowland League is going to be split in two, so there'll be an LL West and an LL East. Only clubs with the correct licence based on floodlights and other ground-related factors will be allowed in. So it doesn't really matter who wins the East of Scotland, West of Scotland and South of Scotland Leagues because a team can come 6th or 7th and still go up, along with a qualifier from the Midlands League. Further north, whether the Highland League loses any clubs to relegation will depend on whether there are any qualifiers from the North Caledonian League or the North of Scotland League.

With so many promotions and few (if any) relegations, there'll be dancing in the streets all over Scotland at the end of the season.

Better known as The Sooth, the South of Scotland League has 11 teams, 5 of which are eligible for promotion to the new Lowland League West. We already know which 2 of the 5 will be going up. It'll be Dalbeattie Star and Newton Stewart, and we can expect them to be coming back again within a couple of years at most, probably along with fellow D&G side, the current Lowland League stragglers, Gretna 2008, who might yet find themselves in the LL East next season.

After the games played on 11 October 2025, Stranraer Reserves were at the top of the table. Because they're a reserve side they can't be eligible for promotion, which must give rise to a temptation to wave goodbye to the Blues and float off on their own. After all, it'a bit of a kick in the teeth to be considered not good enough to be in Stranraer's SFL squad.

The 5 whose grounds are deemed good enough for promotion are Dalbeattie Star, Newton Stewart, Creetown, St Cuthbert Wanderers and Wigtown & Bladnoch. They are also invited to take part in the Scottish FA Cup, and were joined this year by Lochar Thistle, who qualified by winning the SoSL title last season.

Results were disappointing...

Preliminary Round

Invergordon 3 Lochar Thistle 1

First Qualifying Round

Bo'ness Athletic 7 Creetown 0

Glasgow University 3 Newton Stewart 1

St Cuthbert 0 Burntisland Shipyard 2

Tayport 4 Dalbeattie Star 1

Wigtown & Bladnoch 0 Camelon Juniors 10

Officially, the Sooth is on the same level as the East of Scotland League, but the Wigtown v Camelon result is indicative of the difference between the two. Also, Camelon's players get paid; Wigtown's don't.

Not all the teams in the League are easy to find by their titles. While Creetown, Newton Stewart, Lochmaben and Dalbeattie play in or close to their eponymous towns & villages, and Stranraer Reserves on a floodlit all-weather pitch at the Academy rather than at Stair Park, the others are Lochar Thistle (Heathhall, Dumfries), Abbey Vale (New Abbey), St Cuthbert (Kirkcudbright), Nithsdale Wanderers (Sanquhar) and Mid Annadale (Lockerbie). Upper Annandale, from Moffat, are taking a year off. Threave Rovers from Castle Douglas swapped the Sooth for Division Five of the West of Scotland League in 2022, hoping to kick start a climb up the pyramid by dropping 5 divisions. Ironically, had they remained in the SoSL it's almost certain that they would be going up to the Lowland League at the end of this season.

Then there was Tarff Rovers, who disappeared, after 128 years, in 2003, though their ground on the outskirts of Kirkcowan still exists, not that there was ever much there to identify it as a football ground as opposed to a field with a cowshed and some goalposts in it.

On 11 October 2025 Wigtown & Bladnoch (in the red and white stripes) matched last season's points total by drawing 1-1 against St Cuthbert Wanderers at Trammandford Park. There's still a lot of season to go and it would be a treat to see W&B manage a rare win before May.

A particularly eccentric member of the Non League Matters forum travelled by train from the south of England to Dumfries and then caught a bus to Lochmaben during the coronavirus emergency in order to watch a South of Scotland match from outside the ground, because this was during the period in which spectators weren't allowed through the gates. He then made the same trip in reverse, and was seriously indignant when other forum members said he had behaved selfishly by using public transport to make a non-essential trip.

To be fair, not far away George Galloway and his entourage somehow blagged their way into a Queen of the South match even though the Doonhamers' own season ticket holders were still banned. He announced to reporters that he was a devoted Queens' fan, although he had previously professed love for both Celtic and Dundee United. He was standing as an anti-independence Scottish General Election candidate in Dumfries at the time. When the results were in, his Alliance 4 Unity had even fewer seats at Holyrood than Wigtown have points in the SoSL.

Here is a nice story from Dunipace FC of the EoSL.

The Pace had problems last season when their artificial pitch was vandalised and they had to go on the road, but they're home again now.

When I say "home" I mean they're back at Westfield Park in Denny, the larger town to the south of Dunipace where they actually play games. I expect the club didn't want to be associated with Denny, at least before 2017, when part of the town centre looked like this...

It's not been a great season so far for Hutchison Vale. The men's team are bottom of the East of Scotland Premier Division with 1 point to their name. They did have 4, but were fined 3 for fielding an ineligible player in a match they lost 7-0.

The women are in even worse shape, at the foot of the National Women's League Division 1 (i.e. division 2) with zero points from 8 games and a goal difference of minus 68.

The only way is up for both lads and lassies.

On the other hand, Camelon won their first 9 games in the EoSL, which was especially nice for the man whose garden is next to the their ground in Falkirk, who has built his own mini stand so he can watch their games over the fence.

People that aren't sure whether to pronounce the word "scone" as scoan or skon might be interested - or not - to know that Scone, the village that is home to Scone Thistle FC, is pronounced Skoon and was the last word spoken in Mr William Shakepeare's famous but historically inaccurate play, Macbeth.

The home grounds of Nithsdale Wanderers and Kello Rovers are less than 4 miles apart, but this is a derby that doesn't get to take place because Sanquhar is in Dumfries & Galloway and Kirkconnel in East Ayrshire. So Wanderers play in the South of Scotland League, and Rovers in the West of Scotland League. Nithsdale Wanderers' nearest away trip in the SoSL is to Lochar Thistle, in Dumfries, 29 miles away along the A76, while Kello Rovers are about 20 miles south east of their closest opponents in the WoSL Third Division, Lugar Boswell Thistle.