1959 British Home Championship

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The 1959 British Home Championship was a football tournament played between the British Home Nations. It came the year after the notable failure of England and Scotland to impress at the 1958 FIFA World Cup, for which all four nations qualified for the first and only time. Wales and Northern Ireland were the only achievers, both reaching the quarter-finals after playoffs.

Many of these problems stemmed also from the deaths of a number of international players from some teams in the Munich Air Disaster the year before. During the Home Championship, the Northern Ireland team took the unusual step of flying to Madrid for a friendly game against Spain between the matches against England and Scotland. The trip was however not a success, the Irish losing 2-6 with goals from Billy Bingham and Jimmy McIlroy.

For the second successive year the tournament was tied between England and Northern Ireland, as both managed a draw and a win against the other two teams in addition to the high-scoring mutual draw which began the competition. Scotland came second after comfortably beating Wales, drawing with the Irish but then narrowly losing to England in London which cost them a share of first place. Wales recovered from their defeat to the Scots to draw with England in the second match but lost heavily to the Irish in their final game and so finished last.

[edit] Table

Team	Pts	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD
Northern Ireland	4	3	1	2	0	9	6	+3
England	4	3	1	2	0	6	5	+1
Scotland	3	3	1	1	1	5	3	+2
Wales	1	3	0	1	2	3	9	-6

The points system worked as follows:

2 points for a win
1 point for a draw

[edit] Results

October 4, 1958	Northern Ireland	3–3	England	Windsor Park, Belfast
	Wilbur Cush, Bertie Peacock, Tommy Casey		Bobby Charlton 2, Tom Finney	Windsor Park, Belfast

October 18, 1958	Wales	0–3	Scotland	Ninian Park, Cardiff
			Graham Leggat, Denis Law, Bobby Collins	Ninian Park, Cardiff

November 5, 1958	Scotland	2–2	Northern Ireland	Hampden Park, Glasgow
	Bobby Collins, David Herd		Jimmy McIlroy, Eric Caldow (own goal)	Hampden Park, Glasgow

November 26, 1958	England	2–2	Wales	Villa Park, Birmingham
	Peter Broadbent 2		Derek Tapscott, Ivor Allchurch	Villa Park, Birmingham

April 22, 1959	Wales	1–4	Northern Ireland	Racecourse Ground, Wrexham
	Derek Tapscott		Peter McParland 2, Bertie Peacock, Jimmy McIlroy	Racecourse Ground, Wrexham