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The Scottish Highland Football League (commonly known as the Highland League) is a part-time professional senior football league in the north of Scotland. The league, which is the fifth level within Scottish football, is a full member of the Scottish Football Association. It currently consists of 18 teams from the Scottish Highlands as well as the lowlands of Moray and Aberdeenshire. Until the reorganisation of Scottish football during the 2012–13 season, the league was historically one of the senior leagues in Scottish football. The others being the Scottish Premier League and Scottish Football League, along with the East of Scotland and South of Scotland Leagues. Since the 2014-15 season, the league (along with the newly formed Lowland Football League) is a feeder division for SPFL's Scottish League Two. The Highland champions play the winners of the Lowland Football League for a chance to face the bottom club in League Two. All current league members are full members of the Scottish Football Association so qualify automatically for the following season's first round of the Scottish Cup. However the league champions and the runner-up team receive a bye into the cup's second round. The season's league champion team also gain a place in the Scottish Challenge Cup, subject to holding a current SFA licence. The league's current sponsorship deal is with the Aberdeen-based ''Press & Journal'' media group. == Season structure == Each team in the league plays each other twice during a season - once at home, once away, for a total of 34 matches. The standard league scoring system of 3 points for a win and 1 for a draw is applied, with ties in the league table broken by goal difference. The champions are presented with the League trophy and a flag, either immediately after the match which secures the victory, or at the next match at which it is practical to do so. With the introduction of the new pyramid structure in Scottish football, a new schedule was introduced in the 2014-15 season, in order to ensure that all matches affecting the title are completed in time for the promotion playoffs beginning in April. As the region is prone to severe weather in winter, postponements have sometimes caused the conclusion of the season to be delayed (e.g. in 2013, a prolonged spell of bad weather meant the final matches were not played until 25 May). Various proposals which would have reduced the number of matches a team would play (either by instituting a two-phase season like that used in the Scottish Premiership, or by dividing the League into two smaller divisions), were considered but did not find favour with League members. Instead, clubs now play both a Saturday and a Wednesday fixture most weeks from August through October, taking advantage of milder weather at the start of the season. The new schedule builds in a four-week buffer near the end of the season during which no matches are initially scheduled, allowing any backlog of postponed matches to be cleared before the final fixtures. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Highland Football League」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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