The merger between the Southwest Peninsula League and the Western League was given approval by the Football Association’s League’s Committee last month.

John Pool the Chairman of the Toolstation Western League and Phil Hiscox, the Secretary of the Southwest Peninsular League, joined Ian Nockolds on the Toolstation Western League Podcast to discuss what this latest announcement means for Project South West. The full interview is being serialised in The Journal and in this first episode, John Pool considers the work that needs to go into making this project a reality and Phil Hiscox explains what the FA’s announcement means for the merger.

PH: What it means is that the big hurdle of having approval from ... so, basically, the whole project has changed from being a project group working on a proposal, to the proposal now granted. It's now up to those same people with a few bits of help instead of talking about a proposal, now talking about how to make it a reality in time for the timeframe - which, again, until the FA had made the decision the timeframe wasn't absolutely set in stone, but it now is the 23/24 season.

IN: I noticed it was the Leagues Committee who made the statement on behalf of the FA. For those people listening who aren't familiar with the internal structure of the FA, who are the Leagues Committee, what is their role in all of this?

PH: Each County FA has a member of the FA Council and there are certain others from the professional game, the service football associations, all that sort of thing, the Premier League and EFL have representatives. Each of those people sit on an FA committee so there's one on referees; the chap from Devon, Tom Sampson, sits on the Referees Committee; the chap from Cornwall, Geoff Lee, he sits on the FA Vase Committee. Ironically enough the chap from Somerset, Phil Chaplin, sits on the Leagues Committee. So, the Leagues Committee is made up of Council members from up and down the country whose job, beyond that subcommittee, is to control the National League System leagues. It's not really for the leagues below that, because those are dealt with by the County FAs themselves.

IN: What work needs to happen between now and then to make that a reality?

JP: Well, initially a considerable amount. I mean, this is about now creating a new company, bearing in mind we've obviously got another season to be able to deal with ongoing. We met on Monday, we had an excellent meeting in terms of putting together how we saw the process being rolled out in regard to what needed to be done, where the priorities lead. I think it was well established that we have a fair idea that whilst there won't be major changes, it may be necessary to seek advice with regards to things that we perhaps haven't identified when mergers come about - but we're fairly confident at the moment that now we've got the 'go ahead'... like I say, we've had no contact with the FA since that time with regards to what they're looking for. And we believe that we've got the expertise on both leagues to be able to create this new business and getting us prepared for 23/24.

Next week Phil Hiscox will explain what the merger means for Clubs competing for promotion and hoping to avoid relegation this season. http://toolstationleague.com/podcasts/