This interview is being serialised in The Journal over the coming weeks. In this fourth extract John Pool, Chairman of the Toolstation Western League and Phil Hiscox, the South West Peninsula League Secretary, consider whether the proposed merger will be consistent with the FA vision for a ‘perfect pyramid’ across Non League football and what this proposal will mean for neighbouring leagues, like the Hellenic League.

JP: I think there's an element of convenience about some of this, to be quite honest, because when the restructuring process came about it coincided with the evolving of this new Thames Valley League. It was abundantly clear that would have to be populated from somewhere, and probably the league that was perhaps the most vulnerable, at that point in time, was the Hellenic League. So, inevitably they were faced with losing clubs. If you bring that back to our situation, the element of convenience probably brought about the movement of clubs from the Western League to facilitate the clubs coming in from the South West Peninsula League. Going forward, I can clearly say now, and I'm sure that Phil would support this fully, enough is enough now. I would not be under any illusions, and if anybody else is, that a number of the clubs now that have left us to join the Hellenic League, in all probability would look at the regionalisation going forward and perhaps feel that they would like to be very much a part of that. The FA, without a shadow of a doubt, would dictate where the footprint begins and ends in relation to Bristol, but it's certainly something that we're very conscious of. And, yeah, the future says very much to us that Bristol becomes very much a part of the South West footprint.

PH: Yeah, I mean, from my point of view, I think that the two centres of population for the new league are Bristol and Plymouth; they're the two biggest conurbations. And they should be the centres of the two step-five leagues, the step-six league has slightly different boundaries on those. But I want to just pick up on your point you made there Ian about an imperfect pyramid, and it was always going to be imperfect because the country isn't in a uniform shape. And down here in the South West, one of the reasons why we have two step-sixes covering, effectively, almost one county each is not just the travel but it's the infrastructure. When you take Axminster, who play in the east of the area, and Penzance who play in the far west of the area, the distance between them, it's compounded by the fact that there's not a single mile of motorway between the two of them, it's the time it takes to travel. Likewise, you know, in the Western League, we'll see this again now with Barnstaple and Ilfracombe. It's a long time to get to these places, even if the distances on a roadmap aren't as bad. Because, you know, Ilfracombe, Dartmouth, Penzance, Axminster; the infrastructure just isn't there as it is elsewhere in the country to get to these places. My last point on the 'perfect pyramid' and how we will make it more perfect, I don't think you'll ever make it perfect, but I think a way of improving it is, in my belief, that a club progressing should increase its mileage step by step in the same way as it increases its ground standard step by step. So, a club in Devon or Cornwall at the moment are playing in a two-division geographic feeder league. To join step-six, they're doubling their mileage. So Bude, for example, who've just come up from the St Piran East Division will double their mileage next season because they'll now be travelling further than they were last season. If they were to progress in years to come and play at step-five, under the current proposals, they will be quadrupling their mileage, because they would have to play your Keynsham’s, Welton’s and all the rest of it. Under our proposal, they will double their mileage because they will go throughout Devon and Cornwall, Somerset and Dorset. I believe that the proposal allows a club to effectively double its mileage, which is to be expected as you move up through the pyramid. But at the moment, some clubs will be facing a quadrupling of the mileage.

JP: It's been long held the view that simply the further South you come, to achieve the perfect pyramid becomes increasingly difficult because to all intents and purposes there's one way in and one way out, and it's East and West. If you look at the road network and this is perhaps, without getting too political about it, where we feel is that we would like more opportunity to have an input when these allocations are done. Because it's alright sitting some distance away and making these judgments about where clubs go; postcode-wise, or every other-wise, but we're more conscious of what's involved with regards to the road networks and how difficult it can be. And it is time critical, especially mid-week.