An annual football tournament between Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Ireland is planned to start in 2011, according to the Scottish FA.

Although the countries had hoped to stage the tournament next year, they decided to wait because of an already crowded international calendar.

"The group's view was that present fixture congestion prevented them from starting the competition before 2011," Rob Shorthouse, the Scottish FA's head of communications, said.

The tournament, which had provisionally been named the Celtic Cup, will be called the Four Nations Tournament and held in one country each year on a rotational basis.

Double-header matches will be played on the same day in February and May.

The event will be a kind of successor to the Home International Championship in which England featured before it was scrapped after the 1983-84 edition due to fixture congestion and diminishing public interest.

An all-Ireland team originally competed in the tournament until it was replaced by Northern Ireland in 1951, who remain in the record books as the last winners of the competition.

Reuters