The Football Association plans to meet with England supporters to try to stamp out the inflammatory chanting that tainted Tuesday's match against Scotland at Celtic Park.

The FA apologised yesterday after a large section of the 5,000-strong England support chanted "**** the IRA" on several occasions during the 112th meeting of international football's oldest rivals in Glasgow.

The FA is keen to avoid the song becoming a regular among the England support, especially as the Three Lions are due to face the Republic of Ireland in Dublin next June.

English football's governing body plans to meet with fans' groups over the four-month international break in the hope that it will help eradicate the problem.

An FA spokesman said: "We apologise for any offence caused by a section of the England support at the match with Scotland. The FA does not condone inappropriate and offensive chanting and intends to meet with supporters' groups to discuss the wider issues.

"We have consistently urged supporters to show respect and not to chant songs that could be regarded as insulting to others - particularly from a religious or political perspective."

Leading anti-discrimination campaigner Piara Powar criticised the fans who joined in with the anti-IRA chanting.

"The Ireland situation is being healed. People there have been working very hard in the north and south to address the troubles they had in the 1970s and 1980s and beyond and then England fans come along and there are songs which are completely irrelevant," said Powar, chair of the FARE (Football Against Racism in Europe) Network.

"Presumably they were singing them last night because they were in Celtic Park and because Celtic has a strong Irish fan base.

"It's completely unnecessary and I think that now would be a good time for the FA to look at how the fans are led in their chanting."

Many people were left disappointed by the actions of the England band, which seemed, on first sight, to be complicit.

It provided the background music to the chant, but leader John Hemmingham insists neither he nor his band-mates heard any references to the IRA.

Hemmingham instead thought the band was providing the tune to a song called "Follow England Away" rather than anything to do with the IRA, and apologised for any offence.

"We were absolutely not aware of it (the IRA chants)," Hemmingham told Press Association Sport. "All the fans around us were singing 'Follow England Away'

"It was only when a band member saw on Twitter that some people were saying we were playing anti-IRA songs that we became aware.

"Then we immediately stopped and played something else."

Hemmingham, who formed the England band 21 years ago, added: "If anyone was offended by what was happening, then obviously we are not very happy about that.

"The FA have apologised and we would go along with that if anyone was offended."

Hemmingham says he immediately contacted the FA regarding the issue when he was alerted to the anti-IRA element of the chant by one of his band-mate.

"We contacted the FA as soon as we found out," Hemmingham said.

"We contacted them and said: 'We have been made aware of this. Rest assured, we will drown it out in the second half, we will play something else in the second half', and that's exactly what happened.

"The FA sent me a text saying 'Thanks for letting us know. Just make sure it doesn't happen again.' And that was it.

"We are being painted as the bad guys here for doing this and it's completely the opposite.

"We are actually the ones that play nothing like this, we play over it. It's very offensive to us. It's so, so wrong. We are very upset about it."

England manager Roy Hodgson apologised after the game, which his team won 3-1 thanks to two goals from Wayne Rooney and one from Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.

Hodgson said: "I was aware the crowd were tremendously supportive. I didn't have a clue what they were chanting.

''I don't condone it. If anyone was offended, I'm sure the FA would like to apologise to them.

''All we can do is play our football and be grateful for the support, and hopefully they will behave themselves and not get themselves into a situation where their chanting is being criticised.''