With the arguments raging in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland over the ramifications of football team playing at next year's Olympics, Matt Leslie looks at how the consequences could affect the North East clubs and their Celtic-rooted players.
THE sound of heckling which accompanied Welsh stars Aaron Ramsey and Gareth Bale as they boarded the team bus following Wales’ 4-1 win over Norway last Saturday was not because they had played poorly – far from it.
It was because it is what they might do which could ensure a match involving Wales could be a thing of the past.
The Team GB football team which looks set to compete in next year’s Olympics has caused a furore among the three Celtic provinces of the United Kingdom, who all fear their independence as footballing nations will be severely compromised.
The FAs of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have said they have no objections to an England side competing under the GB banner.
However, they all fear that, should one of their own players play in the Olympics, a precedent will be set – leaving those in Fifa who resent the “special status” the home nations have in the world body an opportunity to end it.
That status, of course, being Britain having its own Fifa vice-president and the home nations having separate status along with the four home associations also representing half of the International FA Board (Ifab), the game's law-making body, with Fifa making up the half.
Argentina’s Julio Grondona and Trinidad’s Jack Warner – who supporters of England’s failed bid to host the 2018 World Cup need no introduction to – have voiced their opposition to the home nation’s status.
Fifa’s Sepp Blatter’s contradictory statements on the issue have done little to ease fears.
Not to mention the attempts made in the past to dissolve them and have a solitary British team.
In the early 1970s, with football growing in Africa and Asia and in a bid to increase their own World Cup place allocation, moves were made to end the home nation privileges which were quelled due to the Uefa nations rallying behind the British FA’s in order to preserve the vast number of World Cup berths they already had.
In 1972, the Uruguayan delegate tabled a motion to Fifa calling to dissolve the home nation teams and merge them all into a United Kingdom side.
The proposal was withdrawn after the home nations agreed to pay Fifaa share of receipts from the now-defunct Home Championship.
The League of Wales was formed in the early 1990s after warnings Wales’ independent status would be under threat if they did not have a competitive league, and in 1992 British delegates at Ifab were told by Fifa that if they voted against backpass rule it would jeopardise their separate status. All of this without the precedent of professional footballers playing for a unified British team in a competitive fixture.
The Lions rugby team has been cited, but it is a false comparison given that is drawn from players from two separate political nation states and that they only play exhibition matches anyway.
