Celtic Cup 2009

KdjaCL

Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland have agreed "in principle" to play a series of three biennial "Celtic Cup" tournaments.

An agreement signed on Monday commits the countries to arranging the tournaments on a league basis.

Home and away games will be rotated from one tournament to the next with each team playing three matches in each of the competitions.

Last week England distanced themselves from involvement in the tournament.

Commercial arrangements and fixture dates are now being finalised.

The old Home Championship, which included England but not the Republic of Ireland, was staged every year until 1984.



But matches between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were eventually scrapped because of increasing fixture congestion.

Last week Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he would welcome the revival of home internationals to ease the pain of Euro 2008 misery for the four home nations.

England's defeat by Croatia, following the failures of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales triggered calls for the sides to face each other in 2008.

It is the first time since 1994 that no home nations have qualified for a major tournament.

The Republic of Ireland did qualify for the 1994 World Cup in the United States.

Scotland battled valiantly but finished third in a group including Italy and France, while Northern Ireland's fate was sealed when they were beaten in Spain on Wednesday.

Wales's campaign was in tatters after a string of early defeats.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/internationals/7114148.stm

cant see this being any use as all 4 of us are crap.


kdjac

Pigman II

This is a bad idea. It almost like condoning failure.

Guy:Incognito

Pigman II wrote: »

This is a bad idea. It almost like condoning failure.

so what should we do, not play football for a few years as "punishment"?

It's slightly better than normal meaningless friendlies and that can only be a good thing.

KdjaCL

Stekelly wrote: »

so what should we do, not play football for a few years as "punishment"?

It's slightly better than normal meaningless friendlies and that can only be a good thing.

Vs Championship players.


kdjac

Prowetod

The upside of this is we might see ireland do well in something!!!

smemon

add england in, and you have a tournament.

without england, it's a pre-season friendly like cup.

we need england to spice it up and get players turning up rather than making excuses to get away :rolleyes:

Savman

They actually thought up a tournament we could realistically win. Yay.

Mr.Nice Guy

It's a pity the English don't want to be involved (pussies) but we could win this tournament and that would be nice to see.

jimmyboy

Nice away ties though.

Unearthly

I suppose in terms of rivalry it will be interesting enough but I don't see it benifitting us for preperation for qualifers, since the style of play is completely different to what we will be facing.

leninbenjamin

Unearthly wrote: »

I suppose in terms of rivalry it will be interesting enough but I don't see it benifitting us for preperation for qualifers, since the style of play is completely different to what we will be facing.

ah yeah, it's nothing more than a distraction, but still if it gives us something to cheer about when we'd otherwise be banging our heads of walls at the probable woes of the qualifiers then sure why not?

Mitch Connor

Pigman II wrote: »

This is a bad idea. It almost like condoning failure.

How is it?

Do they play some big internation competition in 2009? 2011? 2013? Not one a european team can play in, so what failure are you talking about?

leninbenjamin

actually hopefully this will be a somewhat more competitive and useful replacement for the utterly useless "tours" we've seen them go on in recent years during the summer months.

Unearthly

leninbenjamin wrote: »

actually hopefully this will be a somewhat more competitive and useful replacement for the utterly useless "tours" we've seen them go on in recent years during the summer months.

Fair point

shane86

****, might be abroad, would have loved to travel to the Scots game.

At least its a trophy to play for, unlike reg friendlies. Any more word on England?

_blank_

Hahahahahahahaha.

A competition to let the dregs of the premier league and lower tier english leagues feel important.

This is a slight step up from the "B" Internationals.

paulocon

Looks to me to be something of a commercial decision. Looks like they could have been looking at the Rugby model as well....

How can we get friendlies that people will go to?
We'll do something like the 6 nations, sher people love that...

Hold on, the English don't want to know about it and there's no point even asking the Italians....

Sher, we'll do it anyways - we'll promote it like feck for the first year - sell the tickets and make a few bob before the public grasp the fact that the games still really are only friendlies...

We'll even give it a sexy name that makes it look like we never wanted the English... something like 'The Celtic Cup'...

gucci

yeah i cant see it lasting the 3 or 4 goes, the FAI will surely want a nice tour of america or somewhere nice and warm for a few weeks sometime.
tournament is a waste of time in my opinion, were not going to make any progress internationally by playing against these 3 teams, its going to be blood and thunder, kick and rush premiership/championship type football. meaning we'll still get slaughtered when it comes down to it against teams comfortable in possession and who know how to play international football.

shane86

DesF wrote: »

Hahahahahahahaha.

A competition to let the dregs of the premier league and lower tier english leagues feel important.

This is a slight step up from the "B" Internationals.

Oh jesus, this dregs talk again

We currently have two regulars who regularlly play for top 4 teams. If Stephen Ireland comes back, that makes a possible four with Dunne if Man City can continue their push under Sven. Duff is fmr Chelsea, Robbie had a brief spell in Serie A (even though he is admittedtly sh1te for us right now), and we have arguably the best goalie in the prem. Dregs my bollix.

Hyzepher

This looks like it got the stamp of approval once the WC draw was out of the way and none of the teams were drawn together. I can see it getting a little confusing if some are drawn together for Euro 2012 qualifying - cant see them wanting to go ahead on years that that happens.

_blank_

shane86 wrote: »

Oh jesus, this dregs talk again

We currently have two regulars who regularlly play for top 4 teams. If Stephen Ireland comes back, that makes a possible four with Dunne if Man City can continue their push under Sven. Duff is fmr Chelsea, Robbie had a brief spell in Serie A (even though he is admittedtly sh1te for us right now), and we have arguably the best goalie in the prem. Dregs my bollix.

Wales, Norn Iron and Scotland are in the Celtic Cup aswell, in case it escaped your notice.

Also, I'm not so sure the Club Managers will be too happy with players, such as Duffer, Given, Robbie Keane, Stephen Ireland and Richard Dunne playing in a Bienniel Summer Tournament.

I suspect we'll see some "injuries" around the time the EPL Season Ends and the beginning of this sham of a thing.

Guy:Incognito

So we should play completely meaningless friendlies against other teams instead? Or maybe we should go play th eUS cup again?

If this was some crap tournament filled with EL players playing conference players, you'd be saying it's a great idea.

_blank_

Stekelly wrote: »

If this was some crap tournament filled with EL players playing conference players, you'd be saying it's a great idea.

Like the U23s you mean?

Yeah, you are right, it would be a good idea.

Is IS a good idea.

Gives some players who wouldn't otherwise have a chance to represent their country. Gives the better players in the eL a chance to get exposed to a bigger stage, and possibly get some money into the eL.

This Celtic Sham though, it's nothing more than a cynical money making excercise imo.

"Here lads, we're all pretty shíte with dwindling attendences and falling interest in our national teams, how about we invent a tournament that one of us is bound to win to fleece our publics, oh and what about asking Scotland and England too?".

Guy:Incognito

DesF wrote: »

Gives some players who wouldn't otherwise have a chance to represent their country. .

Should I get a cap so? why not, I'd really really like one please Mr Delaney? Not good enough is not good enough. If the new manager deems a player good enough for a call up he'll get one otherwise he isnt good enough and we dont need to be creating competitions for them. We have , as you said, the U23's, U21's etc. Theres also Junior Internationals, B-team etc.



Fleece the public? Is it in the constitution that you have to buy tickets. I might watch the games on tv. Wont cost me anymore than the tv already does.

BaZmO*

I'm guessing this tournament will be one of two things.

1) It will be held during the summer months instead of one of the usual trips to America tournaments in which case none of the senior more established players will bother turning up and therefore it will make it pointless as we will learn nothing from the games.

or

2) The tournament will be held instead of friendlies against other nations where we might actually learn something from the games as opposed to the usual "blood and thunder, kick and rush premiership/championship type football" as gucci has already mentioned. In which case we'll learn nothing from the games.

It's a pointless exercise imo and without England involved I doubt it will have major pulling power. Just look at the amount (or lack of) fans that travelled to Cardiff to our last game against Wales.

loyatemu

they're also thinking of reviving the England-Scotland fixture
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/2007/11/27/why_the_auld_enemy_could_becom.html

but the same drawbacks apply - the games will inevitably descend into the type of frantic, physical, long-ball affairs that do nothing to improve the teams for encounters with more skillful opposition.

BaZmO*

loyatemu wrote: »

they're also thinking of reviving the England-Scotland fixture
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/2007/11/27/why_the_auld_enemy_could_becom.html

but the same drawbacks apply - the games will inevitably descend into the type of frantic, physical, long-ball affairs that do nothing to improve the teams for encounters with more skillful opposition.

They were talking about that on Football Focus the other day and Martin Keown was saying that this fixture is the only one that he reckons the players would consider to be of any significance saying that the others would just be a hassle. The rest of the panel seemed to agree.

zAbbo

Good idea, and introduces a bit of rivalary as well. Also gives us a chance to benchmark ourselves against teams of a similar level, and to gauge progression from Cup to Cup.

Yeah, you might poo-poo the idea, but who won't want to win these games?

BaZmO*

zabbo wrote: »

Also gives us a chance to benchmark ourselves against teams of a similar level

What? It already happened