Now, don't be disingenuous, please, Allan. You know perfectly well it depends on which particular competition one is engaged in or referring to. In some competitions, e.g., the FIFA World Cup, the constituent countries of the UK enter separate teams; in others, e.g. the Olympic Games, a team is entered to represent Great Britain as a whole; in the recent Rugby Union test series v Australia, the team was called The British and Irish Lions.

It is the organisers of the competitions who decide on these entities, not the participating nations. So that in the first named above, the team who went furthest represented solely England, Scotland, Wales, N Ireland not having got beyond the qualifying stages.; in the others, not so.

Nothing to do with damned if do or don't; and don't pretend you didn't know all this.

It is all better, however you slice it, than the Americans calling the knockout comptition of a game that no-one else plays "The World Series"!

~M~