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The British Home Championship (also known as the Home International Championship) was an annual football competition contested between the UK's four national teams, England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland (Northern Ireland after 1921-1922), from the 1883-1884 season until the 1983-1984 season.

Overview

By the early 1880s, the development of football in the United Kingdom was gathering pace and the four national football teams of the UK were playing regular friendlies against each other, with nearly every team playing all the others annually. At the time, the football associations of each Home Nation (The Football Association (England), the Scottish Football Association, the Football Association of Wales and the Irish Football Association) had slightly different rules for football, and when matches were played the rules of whoever was the home team were used. While this solution was workable, it was hardly ideal. To remedy this, the four associations met in Manchester on December 6, 1882 and agreed on one uniform set of worldwide rules. They also established the International Football Association Board (IFAB) to approve changes to the rules (a task that they still perform to this day).

The new rules meant that formal international competitions could now easily be devised. Thus, at the same meeting, the associations formalised the annual friendlies and the British Home Championship - the world's first international football competition - was born.

The Championship was held every football season, starting with the 1883-1884 season (the first ever match seeing eventual winners Scotland beat Ireland 5-0 away on January 24, 1884). The dates of the fixtures varied, but they tended to bunch towards the end of the season (sometimes the entire competition was held in a few days at the end of the season). Initially, the winner of the competition was seen as the best team in the world, though as football developed globally this tag was dropped. The rise of other international competitions, especially the World Cup and European Championships, meant that the British Home Championship lost a lot of its prestige as the years went on.

However, the new international tournaments meant that the Championship took on added importance in certain years. The 1949-1950 and 1953-1954 Championships doubled up as qualifying groups for the 1950 and 1954 World Cups respectively and the results of the 1966-1967 and 1967-1968 Championships were used to determine who went forward to the second qualifying round of Euro '68.

The British Home Championship was discontinued after the 1983-1984 competition. There were a number of reasons for the tournament's demise, including it being overshadowed by the World Cup and European Championships, falling attendances at all but the England v Scotland games, fixture congestion, the rise of hooliganism to epidemic levels, the Troubles in Northern Ireland (civil unrest led to the 1981-1982 competition being abandoned), and England and Scotland's desire to play against 'stronger' teams. The fate of the competition was settled when the (English) Football Association, swiftly followed by the Scottish Football Association, announced in 1983 that they would not be entering after the 1983-1984 Championship. Ironically, the 'weaker' teams that England and Scotland no longer wanted to play excelled in the final Championship: Northern Ireland won it and Wales finished second. The British Home Championship trophy remains at the Irish Football Association's headquarters in Belfast.