FA reveal British Championship plans

The English Football Association is planning to revive the British Home Championship for a special one-off tournament in 2013.

The competition, which pits England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland against each other in a round robin event, was last played in 1984 before political unrest in Northern Ireland forced its cancellation.

There were rumours the English FA was hoping to resurrect the tournament as an annual event, but general secretary Alex Horne said talks with the other associations were focused on holding the event to mark the FA’s 150th anniversary in 2013.

“We’re talking to the home nations about a possible one-off round of matches with them,” Horne told the BBC.

“I think we’d be talking about a series of one-off matches in 2013 to mark our 150th anniversary.”

Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland are scheduled to take part in a similar tournament, the Carling Nations Cup, in February and May this year.

The biggest issue standing in the way of a regular tournament involving the home nations is the congested international schedule, which already involves Euro 2012 and World Cup 2014 qualifiers.

But Horne admitted the possibility of a regular tournament sometime in the future had not been ruled out.

“What I don’t want to do is determine a footballing strategy for future management,” Horne said.

“The reality of preparing for qualifiers that we face for the European Championship and the World Cup mean that managers rightly want to experience different playing styles, and fans want to experience different playing styles, and we only have a limited number of friendly matches available.”

“So I wouldn’t want to commit to a resurgence of a tournament, but as a one-off it has real merit and I think we should take it a step at a time. It’s still early days in the conversations at the moment.”