The leadership of the two Leagues conducted a joint interview on the Toolstation Western League Podcast, addressing many of the questions which supporters, volunteers, players and coaches have raised about what this proposal will mean for non-league football in the South West.

This interview is being serialised in The Journal over the coming weeks. In this fifth extract Phil Hiscox, the South West Peninsula League Secretary, considers how promotion and relegation will be effected by the creation of the new division.

PH: I think in order for the league to go to a five-division structure with two regionalised step-fives - myself and John, and all those that have been involved in this - we’re very clear from the outset that there should be a qualifying season where club’s know at the start of the season what they’re likely to need to achieve on and off the pitch.

I think the other guiding principle for us is that whether you play in the Western League Division One, Peninsula East or Peninsula West, you have the same opportunities to gain promotion to step-five.

The other thing to bear in mind, of course, is that we are looking at two divisions of 18 at step-five. So, at the moment the allocations released this week show twenty teams at step-five, so ignoring the ins and outs for next season, you’re effectively looking for sixteen new clubs to add to that. So, what I would say is those sixteen clubs would roughly come from two directions. Primarily they will come from the three step-six leagues that currently exist and the qualification of those clubs will be uniform across all three because that’s the only fair thing need to do. And it will be based primarily on the league form and position, if necessary, points-per-game where a position is tied, but you’re certainly only looking at champions first, then runners up, then thirds, that sort of thing. But also, those clubs, and this is going to become an issue with populating both five and six (divisions), but at step-five we have an advantage, whereas at step-six we have a disadvantage.

At step-five there are more than enough clubs that have the ground facilities to populate those divisions in full from the start. So, any club that’s come up, that still has work to do, or has some sort of issue where they’ve had dispensation from the FA to be at step-six, but aren’t able to fully comply with step-five, of course they’re perfectly entitled to win the league on the pitch and win games on the pitch, but they wouldn’t get promotion without the ground facilities reaching the step-five standard. So, that’s where primarily those extra clubs will come from.

The next argument goes back to your previous question about the relationships with other leagues, and that’s more one for John, but my view, and this is just off the cuff, really, but my view without getting involved in the politics of the Western League and the Hellenic League is that the clubs themselves will largely dictate.

John’s hinted, quite rightly, that clubs that know the Western League and how it runs, and the people involved, will make a judgement on the restructuring proposal, and then can decide themselves whether to make an application for lateral movement.

There are Western League clubs in the last year or two who have made application to the FA to move from the Western League to the Hellenic League, there is nothing against or, in fact, the rules perfectly allow clubs next season to make the opposite application to move from the Hellenic League or any other league into this league.

I think any of those clubs have got the right to make that application, and we would ask the FA to look at that when they draw up the boundaries for those new leagues.

The full interview can be heard on Episode 42 of the Toolstation Western League Podcast, which can be found online at http://toolstationleague.com/podcasts/. Next week, John Pool, Chairman of the Toolstation Western League, considers how the administration of the new League structure will work.