London Irish RFC

[Flash Gordon]

How are you feeling about the takeover Flash? Have to say I'm sort of excited to see London Irish at least get back to being ya'know Irish. Can we see the "Come On You Irish" and all it's associated plasticness dropped as well now perhaps.

Hopefully in addition to bringing Irish players to the club they can foster some form of informal relationship with the IRFU, yes it's a private business but it could be mutually beneficial to see players who don't make it into a provincial academey given a shot over there and exiles who don't want to necessarily return to a province having someplace where they can be in a quasi-Irish set up and maybe be in the shop window for the national management as given enough of a concentration of Irish players the club will stay on Joe's radar.

Very happy about it mate, it'll hopefully restore the soul of the club. Interestingly, if you go down to the amateur club you really feel the Irish identity - in the mini's section, I'd say 70-80% of the accents on the sideline cheering on the kids are Irish. However, as you say, at Reading the paddywackery is just embarassing. The "come on you Irish" isn't even the worse of of it, the Leprachaun on the bicycle I saw at the last match I was at marked a new low........Absolutely on the relationship. If they could get to a situation where Irish players knew that they had a shot at the national team playing there, that'd be a recruitment plus and if they could get a coach tuned in and connected to what Joe was trying to do with Ireland it'd be a huge boost. In that scenario, players like Nick Kennedy, Shane Geraghty, Declan Dannaher who were Irish qualified elected to play for England because of the perceived selection criteria (not saying they would have played, but they were available) would add a bit more depth to our player pool.

Nothing like a bit of money to restore the soul!

In fairness, the club had its link with Ireland broken by the "keep the players at home" policy, so had little choice to go in the direction it did. Irish's connection with Ireland was over 100 years old at that point and they supplied more players to the national team than any club in Ireland. And let's be honest, Leinster (as opposed to the clubs) have become what we've become because the IRFU bankrolled the whole operation!

[Peg Leg]

Nothing like a bit of money to restore the soul!

In fairness, the club had its link with Ireland broken by the "keep the players at home" policy, so had little choice to go in the direction it did. Irish's connection with Ireland was over 100 years old at that point and they supplied more players to the national team than any club in Ireland. And let's be honest, Leinster (as opposed to the clubs) have become what we've become because the IRFU bankrolled the whole operation!

Tongue firmly in cheek there flash.

[Flash Gordon]

Nothing like a bit of money to restore the soul!

In fairness, the club had its link with Ireland broken by the "keep the players at home" policy, so had little choice to go in the direction it did. Irish's connection with Ireland was over 100 years old at that point and they supplied more players to the national team than any club in Ireland. And let's be honest, Leinster (as opposed to the clubs) have become what we've become because the IRFU bankrolled the whole operation!

Tongue firmly in cheek there flash.

Got it....