United Kingdom United

As a child, football was a gift which kept on giving – unless you were a player, in which case the season must have seemed interminable. If your club wasn’t in the Anglo-Italian Cup, the British Home International Championship might grab you instead. 

There was none of yer here-today-gone-tomorrow UEFA Nations League nonsense. For a hundred years, each domestic season was wrapped up by a week of fixtures involving each of the home nations, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. These days, eyebrows are often raised when any two of the above are drawn against each other in qualifying groups for the World Cup or Euros, but until 1984, we could enjoy not two but six matches every single year. For me, they were as much a part of the season as the FA Cup Final. 

Many of the Scots played north of the border, fuelling the success of Celtic, Rangers and Aberdeen, but almost all the men in red or green were familiar faces in the Football League alongside their English counterparts. England and/or Scotland reached the World Cup Finals in 170 and ’74, respectively, but come May I welcomed the opportunity to watch the likes of George Best, Pat Jennings, John Toshack and Leighton James in their national colours.

I don’t recall whole matches but isolated incidents have stayed with me. An imperious header against England by Southampton’s Ron Davies – it must have been in 1969 - had Saints fan Dad in absolute raptures: “He was away above Moore”. And indeed he was. However, Wales lost that game, as they did most of the ‘Home’ internationals they played against their more populous neighbour.

A rather more famous incident two years later also sent my normally placid father into a state of heightened animation. For the opening fixture Northern Ireland were hosting England at Windsor Park, presumably hoping to snatch a goal against Sir Alf Ramsey’s men. George Best was at his peak, a constant thorn in any goalie’s side, and at one point he cleverly spotted a chink in Gordon Banks’ armour. Noting how the English number one tended to throw the ball high when attempting a drop-kick clearance, he tracked Banks from the side then, with the ball in the air, flicked a left boot to clip it over the ‘keeper’s head and nodded it in the empty net. Genius, and entirely within the laws of the game. Banks protested and the goal was shamefully disallowed. Dad, of course, had been a goalie but we recognised a perfectly legal goal when he saw it. The ref’s decision cost the Irish not only the goal and the game but also the championship which at that time they had never won outright.

In 1975 I remember watching in amazement as a rampant England, so feeble in their previous games, ripped Scotland apart at Wembley, and the legend of the Incompetent Scottish Goalkeeper was born. Poor Stewart Kennedy may have been a Rangers mainstay but he had an absolute nightmare in the 1-5 humiliation and never played for Scotland again.

Two years later, Scotland gained their revenge. I don’t remember it as a classic match, although the uncompromising centre-forward Joe Jordan roughed up the England defence as only he could. However, the images of the raucous Scots celebrating a 2-1 victory on the Wembley pitch culminating in the destruction of one of the crossbars not only increased awareness of hooliganism in British football but also hastened the end of the championship itself.

By the Eighties, only the oldest rivalry in world football, the England-Scotland clash, roused much passion – too much for the stadium owners and London councils. 100,000 could pack into Wembley or Hampden Park but there wasn’t much enthusiasm for a rain-soaked Tuesday evening at Ninian Park. The growing fear of hooligan incidents, coupled with the political situation in Northern Ireland, only hammered the final nails in the tournament’s coffin.

I couldn’t help feeling sad, despite recognising the reasons for the ruling. The Championship was dying on its feet but, paradoxically, was becoming more interesting as the Welsh and Irish teams were more competitive than they had been for years. Wales had one of their more memorable moments in 1980, a glorious 4-1 triumph over a mediocre England at Wrexham. The hundredth tournament was to be the last, in 1984, and who were the final champions? None other than Billy Bingham’s Northern Ireland. It may have been achieved on goal difference but the trophy remains Irish FA property for as long as the Championship is consigned to history. George Best et al had the last laugh.