The Central Junior Football League was a football league competition operated under the

Scottish Junior Football Association The Scottish Junior Football Association (SJFA) is an affiliated national association of the Scottish Football Association and is the governing body for the junior grade of football in Scotland. The term "junior" refers to the level of football ...

between 1931 and 2002, with an expansion of its membership in 1968.Central Junior League: Including the Scottish Central Junior League
Scottish Football Historical Archive, 4 September 2020
Scottish Football Historical Archive, 4 September 2020 Covering the

Greater Glasgow Greater Glasgow is an urban settlement in Scotland consisting of all localities which are physically attached to the city of Glasgow, forming with it a single contiguous urban area (or conurbation). It does not relate to municipal government ...

area and also including teams in

Lanarkshire Lanarkshire, also called the County of Lanark ( gd, Siorrachd Lannraig; sco, Lanrikshire), is a historic county, lieutenancy area and registration county in the central Lowlands of Scotland. Lanarkshire is the most populous county in Scotl ...

and

Renfrewshire Renfrewshire () ( sco, Renfrewshire; gd, Siorrachd Rinn Friù) is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland. Located in the west central Lowlands, it is one of three council areas contained within the boundaries of the historic county of Re ...

from the outset, the Central league was created following the

Intermediate dispute The Intermediate dispute was a major split in Scottish football which lasted from 1925 to 1931 and concerned the compensation that Junior clubs received when one of their players moved to a Senior football league side. Although largely confined to ...

raised in 1927 by many of the Junior teams in relation to compensation payments for their players moving to Scottish Football League clubs, which in that era was a very common route of progression into the top professional level (whereas towards the end of the 20th century the Senior clubs would typically develop young players within their own

youth system In sporting terminology, a youth system (or youth academy) is a youth investment program within a particular team or league, which develops and nurtures young talent in farm teams, with the vision of using them in the first team in the future if t ...

s, with Junior squads usually consisting of players of various ages who had been deemed not quite good enough for the professional level, and moving up from Junior to Senior being more the exception than the norm as in the past). The dispute lasted four years, with none of the teams from the powerful Glasgow Junior Football League entering the

Scottish Junior Cup The Scottish Junior Cup is an annual football competition organised by the Scottish Junior Football Association. The competition has been held every year since the inception of the SJFA in 1886 and, as of the 2022–23 edition, 108 teams compet ...

and instead playing in separate competitions. In 1931 these teams returned to the SJFA and the Central league was created, although notes from its 1932 AGM stated that it was the 32nd such meeting, suggesting that internally it was considered a continuation of the pre-1927 GJL.Glasgow Junior League
Scottish Football Historical Archive, 27 August 2020 The ''Scottish Intermediate Cup'' was retained but re-designated the

West of Scotland Junior Cup The West of Scotland Junior Challenge Cup was an annual Scottish football competition played in a one-leg knockout format (played at 'home' team grounds as drawn, until the final at a neutral venue), organised by the West Region of the Scottish ...

which has survived to the present day. The Central League continued to provide many finalists in the Scottish Junior Cup, although its membership was somewhat weakened in the 1960s when several teams who had been successful in the GJL era (primarily

Parkhead Parkhead ( sco, Pairkheid) is a district in the East End of Glasgow. Its name comes from a small weaving hamlet at the meeting place of the Great Eastern Road (now the Gallowgate and Tollcross Road) and Westmuir Street. Glasgow's Eastern Necrop ...

Strathclyde Strathclyde ( in Gaelic, meaning "strath (valley) of the River Clyde") was one of nine former local government regions of Scotland created in 1975 by the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973 and abolished in 1996 by the Local Government et ...

and

Shawfield Shawfield is an industrial/commercial area of the Royal Burgh of Rutherglen in South Lanarkshire, Scotland, located to the north of the town centre. It is bordered to the east by the River Clyde, to the north by the Glasgow neighbourhood of Oa ...

) folded, due in part to changes of the

urban environment An urban area, built-up area or urban agglomeration is a human settlement with a high population density and infrastructure of built environment. Urban areas are created through urbanization and are categorized by urban morphology as cities, ...

in which they had drawn their support, with traditional communities being rebuilt and many residents rehomed in new peripheral estates or new towns outside the city. Clydebank also left to become a senior club. A reorganisation of the Junior level across Scotland in 1968 resulted in the

Lanarkshire Junior Football League The Lanarkshire Junior Football League was a football league competition operated in Lanarkshire under the Scottish Junior Football Association which operated from 1891, being the oldest-running regional competition of its kind until a merger in 196 ...

, which had existed since 1891 but had never been as successful as the Glasgow and Central leagues which instead drew the best Lanarkshire teams away into their setup, was fully integrated into the new Central 'region', one of six in the country. In that period, Cambuslang Rangers (coincidentally one of those members based in Lanarkshire but always affiliated with Glasgow leagues) were the strongest club, but their dominance faded after the mid-1970s. From the 1968 merger until 1982, a three-division setup was in operation, organised on merit (i.e. a hierarchy with promotion and relegation between them, rather than three sections of equal prominence split geographically) but with an end-of-season playoff between the three divisional winners to determine the overall champion who claimed the Evening Times Trophy,Evening Times Competitions
AntsHistory resulting in six of those fourteen seasons being won by the 'B Division' winners, and one – 1979–80 – in which the 'C Division' winners, Blantyre Victoria, were declared champions, although the format of the Evening Times Trophy had been amended to the ''Cup Winners' Cup'' a year earlier. In the next two seasons,

Pollok Pollok ( gd, Pollag, lit=a pool, sco, Powk) is a large housing estate on the south-western side of the city of Glasgow, Scotland. The estate was built either side of World War II to house families from the overcrowded inner city. Housing 30,0 ...

then Lesmahagow were both overall champions and Evening Times Trophy winners before the playoffs were discontinued and the 1982–83 'A Division' winners were automatically declared the champions. This system then remained in place until 2002, when the Central region (in which

had become the dominant force) was merged with the Ayrshire Junior Football League that had become increasingly strong in the 1990s in terms of supplying Scottish Junior Cup finalists, to form the Scottish Junior Football Association, West Region, one of three large regions. At the end of the 2019–20 season – which was curtailed due to the

coronavirus pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identifie ...

– all 63 West Region clubs left the SJFA setup to join a new

West of Scotland Football League The West of Scotland Football League (WoSFL) is a senior football league based in the west of Scotland. The league sits at levels 6–10 on the Scottish football league system, acting as a feeder to the Lowland Football League. Founded in 202 ...

in the Senior pyramid,Junior clubs in the west are about to get the best of both worlds
The Scotsman, 19 April 2020 bringing 125 years of Junior league football in the region (including the intermediate years) to an end.

Champions

1931–1968 era

Key:

1968–2002 era

Key: Notes

List of winners

Notes

References

*
Scottish Junior FA Structure

Non-League Scotland (archive version)
with club progression by season 1990 to 2007) {{Scottish Junior Football Association 1931 establishments in Scotland 2002 disestablishments in Scotland Sports leagues established in 1931 Sports leagues disestablished in 2002 Defunct Scottish Junior Football Association leagues Football in Glasgow Scottish Junior Football Association, West Region Football in Renfrewshire Football in West Dunbartonshire Football in East Dunbartonshire Football in Inverclyde Football in North Lanarkshire Football in South Lanarkshire Football in East Renfrewshire