INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

It is hardly surprising that the first official International match played by Scotland was against England. It was played in Glasgow 0n the 20 May 1947 . England were represented by a team drawn from players resident in the South of England and won by 42 points to 14. This South of England Team went on to represent Great Britain in the 1948 Olympic Tournament held at Harringay Arena in London. England returned to Glasgow in June 1949 and an improving Scottish team reduced the deficit to four points losing 28 - 32. The 1951 International was played at Falkirk Ice Rink and once again England were victorious by 41 points to 30.

The ambitious four year old Scottish Association entered a team in the 1951 European Championships which were held in Paris, France in May of that year. The Scottish team finished fourteenth of the sixteen teams who entered. The experience was to prove invaluable. The Pleasance Basketball Club supplied five members of the team and there were representatives of other Edinburgh Clubs, PO Nomads and Royal High School FP. Glasgow clubs contributed players from Maryhill, Kings Park & Outram Press.

The 1952 International moved to London, Scotland showed better form but still went down 32 to 29. England swept the early series of matches returning to Glasgow in 1954 where they beat Scotland by 59 points to 50 at The Kelvin Hall.

In the next International Scotland recorded its first victory over the "Auld Enemy" winning by a single point 37 to 36. The match was played in November 1955 at the USAF base at South Ruislip in London and was televised by the BBC. The 1956 match was played in December at Kirkcaldy Ice Rink. Scotland won for a second time --- by 48 to 46.

Flushed with success the ABAS decided to enter the European Championships which were to be held in Sofia, Bulgaria. A team was selected and players went about raising the necessary funds for the journey. Travelling by train & boat the return fare amounted to the princely sum of twenty-seven pounds per person. Disaster struck when the manager absconded with the team savings just a few weeks before the scheduled departure. Players and officials somehow managed to scrape together the wherewithall necessary and set off on the journey which took two full days to complete. The tournament was played on a parquet wooden floor laid over the turf of the national football stadium. Scotland finished fifteenth in the sixteen team competition.

Following discussions with the EBBA and the Basketball Association of Wales, Scotland offered to host a tournament with a view to selecting a Great Britain Team to participate in the Pre-Olympic Tournament to be held in Bologna, Italy in August 1960. The Irish Basketball Association, which was an all Ireland organisation, was invited to make up a four country tournament. The offer was accepted and the ABAS made arrangements for the event to be played in March 1960 at the recently completed facility at the USAF base at RAF Kirknewton, Midlothian.

Scotland won all three matches in the round robin format, beating England in the decisive final game by 57 points to 47. The Great Britain team was duly selected, Scotland furnishing five players, England five and Wales two.

The success of the Kirknewton Tournament led to the formation of a Four Countries Committee charged with the responsibility of encouraging and promoting competition between the four home nations. This committee was the forerunner of the British and Irish Basketball Federation (BIBF). The Four Countries Committee held biannual meetings, initially in Manchester YMCA and from 1978 at the headquarters of the English Basketball Association (EBBA) which had recently moved to Leeds. This proved to be a reasonably central location for travel by representatives of Scotland, Wales and Ireland.

The second FCIT was held at the shiny new sports centre at Crystal Palace in London.


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