by Jeremy Orbell

Created on: February 06, 2008

With the UK national and Irish teams all failing to qualify for Euro2008 the football authorities must look at ways of reigniting the flame of passion-filled football to create a springboard for future success. To do this I suggest the reintroduction of the Home International Championships in a new fixture-friendly format possibly along with the Republic of Ireland.

For many years, certainly from England's point of view, we have seen a string of almost meaningless friendless where virtually two different teams play depending of which half of the game you are watching.

Making friendlies meaningful are surely a benefit for all teams but as a competition, the occasional game will not create such an impact if a tournament takes two years to complete. To be a success, a new tournament needs to be compressed into a short period of time to capture excitement for the fans and encourage sponsorship.

The ideal time to do this is in between major tournaments. I would suggest the most practical way of staging an event such as this would be to hold it every four years which will only heighten anticipation for the event. If England decided it did not want to take part my suggestion would still work with the Republic of Ireland's involvement.

There has been a suggestion that England may be persuaded to come on board at a later date if the situation was right. Obviously that presents its own fixture issue as there would then be five teams wanting to take part.

Below is my original format for a new Home International Championships which I tentatively called The British Four Nations Cup. After this I have included a section how the four home nations plus the Republic of Ireland could be involved.

FOUR NATIONS CUP

Although it is likely to be impractical now, I would like the tournament to start in 2009 to coincide with the 125th anniversary of the first tournament. Rather than the traditional round robin group affair the tournament should be played as a knockout competition with two semi-finals, a 3rd/4th place play-off and a final. Each country should stage one game per tournament and one competition final in rotation.

For the first tournament, all four national stadiums should be used. After that smaller more appropriate sized venues could be used but for illustration I've included all the national stadiums for the example below.

For example:

2009 - Scotland

Semi Final 1 - Windsor Park, Belfast (Opening match as Northern Ireland are current holders)
Semi Final 2 - Wembley Stadium, London
3rd/4th

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