On St George's Day and for April 23rd I'm going back 35 years to 1986 and the clash between England and Scotland at Wembley.
I had wanted to say that this was a so-called British Home International Championship but, in fact, the last ever tournament of the four home countries (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) took place in 1984. It was a tournament that had been running more or less annually for a century but was abandoned partly due to increasing hooliganism and perhaps a reluctance of the English FA to keep pitting England against overly familiar and not so commercially lucrative foes. The winners (and current holders) of that final tournament were the least frequent winners during the previous century: Northern Ireland on goal difference after a four-way tie. Despite the demise of the Home Internationals, the England-Scotland fixture was lucrative enough to be retained for a further five years until 1989 when the oldest international fixture in the world was finally killed off. Since 1989, England have met Scotland a further 7 times (2 World Cup Qualifiers, 3 European Championship matches and 2 friendlies) and there is also the little matter of the forthcoming Euro2020 Group game on 18th June 2021 for which I have a ticket and my fingers crossed that I'm not excluded due to a Covid-related restriction on the crowd.
Due to the forthcoming World Cup in Mexico, the 1986 version of the annual fixture was played under the banner of the Rous Cup on a Wednesday night in April rather than its more traditional slot on the Saturday after the FA Cup Final in May. Perhaps the midweek date accounted for the disappointing attendance of only 68,357 although, this being the mid-80's, I suspect that the spectre of hooliganism also had something to do with it.
The England starting eleven included three players based in Italy in the AC Milan pair of Ray Wilkins and Mark Hateley and Sampdoria's Trevor Francis. The game proved to be Francis's final appearance for England who were without two of their best players in Bryan Robson and Gary Lineker due to injury.
England took the lead via a Terry Butcher header and doubled their lead in the first half England thanks to another header, this time more of a collectors item from Glenn Hoddle. Scotland did manage to pull one goal back early in the second half courtesy of a Graeme Souness penalty that would have been overturned as being outside the penalty area had VAR been in operation. These were simpler times however and Charlie Nicholas certainly didn't go down easily as seems to be the modern way. Indeed he had to be substituted due to the injury sustained in the penalty incident.
It finished 2-1 to England. The result took England ahead of Scotland in the series of matches between the two nations by 41-40 and this lead has subsequently been stretched to 48-41 illustrating the disparity in the strength of the respective sides over the last 35 years? Happy St George's Day one and all!
CRB Match No. 436
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