The side from Dumfries and Galloway will take the place of neighbours Gretna following their well-publicised demise and will begin life in the SFL with a Challenge Cup trip to Clyde on July 26.

Athletic were certainly the best equipped of the five sides to go straight into the Third Division and it's fair to say the 29 clubs who voted took the safest option, understandable following the Gretna debacle.

Spartans claimed to be the best long-term bet, with plans for a new stadium and around 1,500 kids involved in their community programme, but with Ainslie Park not due to be SFL-ready until September, clubs did not want to leave anything to chance.

Annan just edged out Cove Rangers after three rounds of voting, with Edinburgh City and Preston Athletic dropping at the first and Spartans at the second based on criteria such as finances, stadium, training facilities and infrastructure, but what about on-field matters?

Well, Spartans, Edinburgh City and Preston Athletic all finished comfortably ahead of Annan in the East of Scotland League (none of them won it), while Cove Rangers were Highland League champions last season, which suggests that the SFL new boys would come last in a mini-league involving the five clubs.

Surely now is the time to introduce a pyramid system into the Scottish game.

Why should the four clubs who missed out have to wait until another club goes out of business or until the league is reconstructed before being allowed to apply again?

Cove Rangers, probably the strongest side on the field, gained over 40 per cent of the votes in the final round but may never get the chance to play in the SFL.

But even outside the five clubs who applied, the senior and junior ranks in Scotland play host to a number of teams who could compete in the SFL given the chance as was shown by the Scottish Cup last season.

In the first year of its revamped format, three junior clubs, including arguably the two biggest in Linlithgow and Pollok, were entered for the first time.

Pollok reached round two where they took the second placed side in the Third Division Montrose to a replay, while Linlithgow hammered Spartans 4-1 in front of 1,600 fans before losing to eventual finalists Queen of the South.

Culter, the other junior side admitted, reached the third round where they lost to Highland League side Huntly

Of course, in one-off cup ties anything can happen, but the fact is that there are teams out there who could be huge assets in the SFL.

Both Pollok and Linlithgow had higher average league attendances than every side in Division Three outwith the champions East Fife, but there is no way for them to work up the ladder, in the way a club like FC United can start at the very bottom tier of English football and aspire to playing in the Football League.

And what motivation is there for the likes of East Stirling and Forfar to avoid finishing bottom of Division Three - it doesn't matter a jot (unless you continually do so, then the club's membership can come up for discussion).

The critics will say only five clubs applied to replace Gretna and that there is no real appetite from within the non-league ranks to join the SFL.

They already play in regionalised leagues at a decent standard and the travel costs involved as well as losing their historical local rivalries may not prove worth the hassle for some in the long-term, but why not give them the choice?

It's true that barely any non-league clubs meet the SFL's standards on the criteria mentioned earlier on stadiums, facilities etc, but who is going to take the risk of spending a small fortune (Annan say it cost them between £300,000 and £400,000 to develop their stadium) to bring a club up to the required level knowing you may have to wait ten or twenty years until another election which admits only one club?

It's a hugely complex issue which has been debated in Scottish football cirles for many years, the fact that there are senior, amateur and junior leagues playing under different associations means a pyramid system would be extremely difficult to implement.

There may not be the appetitie among the majority of clubs now for such a drastic change in the structure of the game, but how much would that attitude change if one or two places were available every season?

The geography issue is often brought up e.g East Stirling from central Scotland finish bottom of SFL Three but Cove of Aberdeen are to take their place, which league do they then fall into? It's a difficult issue, but if they can manage it in England, then why not in Scotland? It may mean some teams on the borderline of different regions moving leagues to keep the balance, but that's not nesseceraly a bad thing. Another option would be to have a national league below Division Three, like the Blue Square Premier in England.

SFA chief executive Gordon Smith has got the ball rolling by discussing the matter but it's clear that a lot of time and hard work will be needed on the part of the numerous associations to make a pyramid system work.

The likes of Doncaster, Carlisle and Wycome were all non-league sides in England just a few years ago - now Doncaster are in the Championship, while Carlisle will consider themselves unfortunate not to be there too following a late collapse last season.

There is no doubt in my mind that teams like Spartans, Cove, Pollok and Linlithgow would be capable of doing similar while Clydebank, who folded in 2002 but started again in the junior ranks, would look to Aldershot for inspiration - they have just won promotion to League Two fifteen years after going out of business and resigning from the Football League.

In my opinion, Scottish football needs to be freshened up in some way, as Smith seems to have recognised, and my view is that introducing a pyramid system is the best way to do that.

There may be little appetite among clubs to play in the SFL now, but open it up and see what happens.

Gretna were a one-off. They had virtually no fan base to begin with and spent far outwith their means - a scenario far removed from the vast majority of non-league clubs who are well run.

Clubs may have taken the safest option this time in electing Annan, but just because Gretna failed doesn't mean the rest would.

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