'Home nations' event is a non-runner

On Soccer:Given his troubles just now England manager Steve McClaren might be forgiven for casting an envious eye back to the days when there was an international tournament in which a side like his could be confident of achieving better than a quarter-final finish.

The extent to which the rest of the former "home nations" would be wasting their time by joining forces with the Republic of Ireland to revive the annual round-robin event was comprehensively underlined, though, by the quality of Saturday's encounter at Croke Park.

The idea was raised at the start of last month and informal soundings have taken place at a number of Fifa and Uefa conferences with the Irish Football Association (IFA) making the majority of the running.

It's not that hard to see why the low cost of participation combined with the likelihood of selling out Windsor Park's tiny capacity would appeal to the north's football administrators but the FAI's leadership could hardly expect to pay their share of the mortgage on the new Lansdowne Road on the basis of the number of paying customers who could be expected to show up to see Steve Staunton's side play opponents like Wales every second year.

Wales, like the Republic, have slipped steadily down the rankings over the last few years and while Northern Ireland have undergone something of a revival of late, climbing to four places above their neighbours on the world ladder at 47, all three lag a considerable distance behind Scotland in terms of current international standing.

What is most remarkable about Scotland's recent performances and their present standing at 16 on the Fifa list is that it is only a couple of years since the team's future was being entirely written off and well respected figures here were warning that our own senior team might suffer a similar decline. At the time Berti Vogts was in charge and while the German had a great many critics in Scotland, there was a minority who felt that he simply didn't have the players required to make a more respectable impact at international level.

There were several significant embarrassments during his two-and- a-half-year reign and he was eventually obliged to go when a draw with Moldova effectively killed off the team's hopes of making it to last summer's World Cup finals.

Taking a longer-term view, a number of commentators wondered aloud whether the slide could be halted given the lack of highly rated youngsters coming through the ranks at the bigger English clubs. Like the Irish and Welsh, the Scots were finding it harder to make the breakthrough in a league where European managers were taking centre stage and looking to the continent or beyond for talented players.

Since the departure of Vogts, however, the Scots have sought salvation within their own borders. Walter Smith sparked an immediate revival in the national team's fortunes and under another former Rangers manager, Alex McLeish, the team has retained its place at the top of what is perhaps the toughest Euro 2008 qualification group of them all. To date, they have won four of the five games played with the highlight coming last October in the form of a 1-0 victory over World Cup finalists France.

Where the Scots have a critical edge over Northern Ireland, Wales and the Republic, however, is that while the others aspire to it, they have a league that, for all its lack of depth, can bring players through, and they have now taken to appointing managers with the experience and knowledge to take advantage of that fact.

While Lawrie Sanchez, John Toshack and Staunton can only hope that particular players find their way to top English clubs and then do sufficiently well to establish themselves, McLeish can at least depend on the SPL. In recent years that league's best clubs have been obliged by financial restrictions to redouble their efforts to develop local talent and the result is that of his current panel of around 25 players around half - players like Shaun Maloney, Kris Boyd and Gary Caldwell - play for one of the two Old Firm clubs while another handful are at the likes of Hearts, Hibernian and Aberdeen.

Much of the criticism levelled at Staunton over the past 15 months stems from the fact that while commentators concede he has to cope with a lack of depth and the fact that established players like Andy O'Brien, Clinton Morrison or Graham Kavanagh find themselves having to endure prolonged spells without first-team football, he has simply not come across as somebody with either the expertise or experience to play what cards he has been dealt well.

On the strength of Saturday's performance the Welsh, currently ranked 77 in the world, might well slip out of the top 100 during the next year or two and the FAW's observation that Toshack is building towards the 2010 World Cup campaign seems entirely fanciful.

Northern Ireland, on the face of it, have a distinctly limited group of players too but Sanchez has managed, at least on occasions, to produce a spark that has consistently absent from the Republic's performances since the summer of 2002 with wins over the Spanish and English overshadowing anything achieved down south in recent times.

In a market as free as football's the price paid for players generally provides a pretty fair indication of their ability. And for all our complaints, the combined value of the side that beat Spain in Belfast last September would not come close to matching the price tag attached to the likes of Shay Given, Damien Duff and Robbie Keane.

Managing the Republic is, in short, a challenge and one that is not going to get any easier in the foreseeable future but Staunton's current difficulties stem primarily from his apparent inability to make the most of his resources.

To judge by his behaviour yesterday it seems that he believes the win over Wales was some sort of turning point for which he has not received due credit. It seems unlikely, but it would be nice to think he is right.