Four Nations delayed until 2011

Once we found out that all five teams from the British Isles would be staying home for Euro 2008, there was a little bit of a silver lining, at least for fans of the old Home Championships. Talk began to circulate about a new British championship tournament, something that many British fans have missed since the last Home tournament in 1984. For my own part, the idea of facing England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Wales was very appealing. But, plans were postponed for two very predictable reasons: the Home Nations find it hard to agree on anything, and the English FA couldn’t even be bothered to try. Still, preliminary plans started to come together for what was known as the Celtic Cup … an unfortunate name in my mind, but one luckily replaced later by the much better (but rugby-sounding) Four Nations Tournament. It would be a meeting of all of the British nations except England, and though the Auld Enemies were the ones I wanted to see most on the pitch against Scotland, it was still something. Some sort of real international tournament.

Now, the plans have taken another blow. Because of fixture congestion, the start of the Four Nations has been put off until at least 2011. This is a real disappointment for me, and should be for all Scotland fans. We had a chance to mix these Four Nations matches in between our World Cup qualifiers next year. It would have provided a chance to not only play more games, but to play ones that really meant something to Scotland players. The recent rise in quality of both the Northern Ireland and Wales teams made it that much more interesting. Now, it will be at least a year after the World Cup before we see any sort of regional tournament.

But it’s more than just disappointing for Scotland fans, or fans of the other Home Nations. This plan, if successful, could be a template for more regional tournaments, which some people have suggested is the alternative to random friendlies. Regional rivalries make the games more meaningful, and a tournament format allows there to be a real prize for winning, besides 10 more points one way or the other in the FIFA world rankings. I personally would love to see a regional tournament for, say, southwestern Europe, with Italy, France, Spain and Portugal. Anyway, we now have at least three years to wait before we know whether the Four Nations format will have a chance to work. Oh well.