The Home Internationals Soccer Tournament, 1946-84: A Complete Record

The Home Internationals Soccer Tournament, 1946-84, A Complete Record by Gary Watton is a match-by-match record of this annual tournament, once played amongst the four national teams of the United Kingdom - England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Each match gets its own page and the details include lineup (interestingly including which club the player played for at the time, a great touch), scorers, and a brief summary to give it context. At the end of the book you'll find complete head-to-head records, final tables of the tournament, and as a bonus the league champion in England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland that year. Wales as you likely know would not be included in that because their top clubs played (and continue to play) in the English football system.

You'll probably not be surprised to know that England were the most regular winner of the Home Internationals but their lead overall Scotland was relatively slender. Dating all the way back to the origins of the tournament in 1883 England won the title outright 34 times and shared it 20 while Scotland had 24 outright titles and 17 of the shared variety. Well back were Wales and Ireland with only 10 outright titles combined.

You can see an example below of a typical page of the book.

Northern Ireland 1 Wales 1; at Windsor Park;
Friday 3rd June 1977; Crowd: 15,000

NORTHERN IRELAND
1 Jennings (Tottenham Hotspur)
2 Nicholl J (Manchester United)
3 Nelson (Arsenal)
4 Nicholl C (Aston Villa)
5 Hunter (Ipswich Town)
6 Hamilton (Everton)
7 McGrath (Manchester United)
8 McIlroy (Manchester United)
9 Jackson (Manchester United)
10 McCreery (Manchester United) replaced by Armstrong
11 Anderson (Swindon Town) replaced by Spence

WALES
1 Davies (Everton)
2 Thomas D (Derby County)
3 Jones (Liverpool)
4 Mahoney (Stoke City)
5 Roberts (Hull City)
6 Evans (Crystal Palace)
7 Sayer (Cardiff City) replaced by Curtis
8 Flynn (Burnley)
9 Yorath (Coventry City)
10 Deacy (PSV Eindhoven)
11 James (Derby County) replaced by Thomas M

Northern Ireland scorer: Nelson
Wales scorer: Deacy

The local team had less than two days to prepare for this
match, which seemed a little harsh, but nevertheless Sammy
Nelson did the unthinkable and posted the first second-half
goal between these two protagonists since the 'sixties! The
Welsh finished this tournament with a highly commendable
haul of four points, helped by a goal here from Nick Deacy.

 The only thing I find curious is the lack of coverage of the Internationals before 1946, though maybe those matches are simpler harder to find record of. Or maybe a second version is coming! Overall though I'd say it would make a great addition to anyone's football library, especially someone with a special interest in statistics.

The Home Internationals Soccer Tournament, 1946-84, A Complete Record can be purchased here through Amazon.