The Football World Championship, also known as the United Kingdom Championship or the International Club Championship, was a exhibition association football match played between the English and Scottish club champions on a regular, but not annual, basis in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with varying degrees of press attention and public interest. Perhaps the most widely publicised at the time under the 'World Championship' name was the 1888 event between Renton and West Bromwich Albion, while in the modern age interest from historians has drawn more attention to matches involving Sunderland, particularly the 1895 match. The FA Cup and Scottish Cup were qualification of the tournament.
History
1870s
Matches were played between the winners of the English FA Cup and the Scottish Cup from October 1876, when Wanderers lost to Queen's Park at The Oval in London; press reports from the time made little mention of the fact that both were holders of the principal trophy of their country, and the fixture was a repeat of an arrangement from the previous year. It appears that a return match in Glasgow was planned during the 1876–77 season (as had occurred in 1875–76), but there are no records of this taking place due to a dispute over expenses. The next meeting between the cup winners was in April 1878 between Wanderers and Vale of Leven (both of whom had just retained the respective trophies), again taking place in London, won by the Scottish side and with no great fanfare over its significance. Vale of Leven were also involved in the next match in December 1879 when they defeated Old Etonians at the first Hampden Park, the first such match to take place in Scotland and in difficult weather conditions.
1880s
In May 1880, Queen's Park beat Clapham Rovers in Glasgow (with proceeds from the match going to a memorial fund for SFA secretary William Dick who had recently died) then repeated this in London the following February. The Spiders then routed Old Carthusians 8–0 in January 1882 at Hampden (again in very bad weather, and something of a freak result as the Charterhouse School alumni restricted Vale of Leven to a 2–1 defeat a day later). with no return match known to have taken place. All of these matches were reported in some detail by newspapers, but no mention was given to a formal championship, either of 'Great Britain' or 'The World'.
That situation changed somewhat in September 1883, when Dumbarton's match against Blackburn Olympic in Scotland was referred to in multiple publications as the "Championship of the United Kingdom". This resulted in a convincing win for Dumbarton; it is unclear whether a return match in February 1884 (won more narrowly by Blackburn Olympic) was considered a second leg of the same tie. The situation at that time was complicated somewhat by the fact that Scottish teams could and did enter the FA Cup, somewhat negating the idea of there being two separate paths to the trophies: a prime example of this came only a week afterwards, when Blackburn Olympic played Queen's Park in the semi-final of the 1883–84 FA Cup in Nottingham. The Scots (who had by then been awarded the Scottish Cup when Vale of Leven refused to play on the scheduled date) progressed to the 1884 FA Cup Final where they lost 2–1 to Blackburn Rovers, another side from the same Lancashire town as the previous winners. Although both clubs played several other cross-border friendlies over the next year, they did not meet each other again until the 1885 FA Cup Final, by which time Queen's Park's status as Scottish Cup holders had been ended (they were eliminated as early as October in a shock defeat to Battlefield, while Renton won the title in February). Thus the second Anglo-Scottish FA Cup final on 4 April 1885 – again won by Blackburn Rovers – could also not be considered a true meeting of the English and Scottish reigning champions. Over the next season Rovers never met Renton, but did challenge Queen's Park twice in that period (the matches noteworthy for the rule laid down by staunchly amateur Scottish Football Association that any professionals employed by Blackburn could not take part, with the makeshift teams well beaten home and away as a consequence). The 1886 FA Cup winners were Blackburn Rovers for a third successive time while Queen's Park reclaimed the Scottish version, but once again these familiar opponents did not arrange to face each other over the next season; Rovers this time did play Renton.