Ireland to play in 'Home Internationals' ?

**joeSoap** · 26/10/2007, 11:01 AM

here

I think it'd be great.

**Jerry The Saint** · 26/10/2007, 11:05 AM

Originally Posted by joeSoap

here

I think it'd be great.

Need to change the name for a start. The way I read it is that Scotland, Wales, NI want to revive the British championship but England aren't interested. As a Plan B, they would invite us to replace England in a Celtic Cup but I don't see any way a 5-team tournament would get off the ground.

In any case, I imagine the competition would be rigged to keep England and Northern Ireland away from Croke Park.

**Drumcondra 69er** · 26/10/2007, 11:26 AM

Originally Posted by Jerry The Saint

Need to change the name for a start. The way I read it is that Scotland, Wales, NI want to revive the British championship but England aren't interested. As a Plan B, they would invite us to replace England in a Celtic Cup but I don't see any way a 5-team tournament would get off the ground.

In any case, I imagine the competition would be rigged to keep England and Northern Ireland away from Croke Park.

Celtic Cup will more then likely start either next summer or the summer after and then on every second summer between major tournemants anyway.

The story today is that England now want a slice of the cake as they might not be in the Euros.......

**onenilgameover** · 26/10/2007, 11:33 AM

sounds good to me........why not?

**jmurphyc** · 26/10/2007, 11:36 AM

I'd be up for it. But as someone pointed out the name needs to be changed.

**holidaysong** · 26/10/2007, 11:38 AM

Originally Posted by jmurphyc

I'd be up for it. But as someone pointed out the name needs to be changed.

Call it 'The British Isles Cup' then..

**NeilMcD** · 26/10/2007, 11:48 AM

2 reasons I would be against it, firstly we learn nothing by playing against the same systems that are used in the Premiership and Championship each week which is where the majority of players will be coming from and where the majority of our players come from.

Secondly it makes for **** trips to Cardiff, Belfast London and Edinburgh rather than great trips to places around Europe.

So for a football and social reasons I would be dead against it.

**Eire06** · 26/10/2007, 12:11 PM

Originally Posted by Jerry The Saint

In any case, I imagine the competition would be rigged to keep England and Northern Ireland away from Croke Park.

Won't do us much good playing against teams that weren't good enough to qualify for the Euros. We need to be playing tougher opposition

England already played in Croke Park with the Rugby so can't see this as a problem.

**gspain** · 26/10/2007, 12:31 PM

Originally Posted by Eire06

Won't do us much good playing against teams that weren't good enough to qualify for the Euros. We need to be playing tougher opposition

England already played in Croke Park with the Rugby so can't see this as a problem.

no shouldn't be a problem for football as you say.

However given the furore over GSTQ for the rugby do you think there might be a bit more of an issue iof GSTQ was played at Croke Park as the national anthem of Northern Ireland? Surely this would be a far bigger issue for the GAA hardliners?

**Lionel Ritchie** · 26/10/2007, 12:34 PM

Won't happen with England. They'll scratch their arses, ponder on it for a while and then organise a couple of friendlies elsewhere.

I've yet to be convinced of the percentage in the idea for anyone but England in particular have little to benefit as their squad and managment is besieged by the red tops at the best of times and whoever's in charge of England would find his head on the block every time they came to a game in the thing.

For footballing reasons I'm in agreement with those who've already pointed out we'd learn little.

Finally I have a suspicion that I hope I'm well wrong about that a regular game between us and NI would bring out a lot of the gobsh1tes on both sides.
No thanks.

**Newryrep** · 26/10/2007, 12:38 PM

no interest whatsoever

**geysir** · 26/10/2007, 12:44 PM

Little chance that Croke Park would be made available to rent in June.
We could call them the "away internationals".

**Wolfie** · 26/10/2007, 12:45 PM

Given the time of year, there'd be a tonne of players dropping out of the squads for fairly lame reasons.

**endabob1** · 26/10/2007, 12:49 PM

I like the idea of the 4 celtic nations and I think that playing NI regularly would remove the "occasion" of the one in 10 year meetings and as such shouldn't be such a novelty for the respective knuckle draggers to parade their bigotry.
If England get involved I think it would be a problem, they have a history (the Rous cup, the previous home nations) of pulling out of these type of tournaments when it doesn't suit their needs. For it to have any kind of long term credence it would need stability and I don't think England would bring that to the party.