Londain Calling!
County London were on the wrong end of a thrashing in Ruislip on Sunday, as Galway visited North-West London for their opening match of the Connacht Championship.
The full time score of London 0-09 to Galway’s 5-21, a twenty-seven point hammering, had commentators on social media up in arms, asking “what is the point of London being placed in an open draw in the Connacht Championship?”
Galway, the reigning Connacht champions, were never going to find London a banana skin and the final result was never in doubt. However, the exiles have had their days in the sun over the years, even reaching a Connacht final in 2013. After beating Sligo in the opening round of that year’s competition, London dispatched a tough Leitrim side in a semi-final replay, before then taking a pasting from Mayo in the final.
A packed McGovern Park on Sunday for County London’s clash against Galway.
In the world of modern sport, a place increasingly dominated by data driven tactics, endless statistical analysis and an obsession with high performance, one could be forgiven for asking what on earth is the point in persisting with entering the championship each year, only to be turned over, sometimes after a gallant showing, but more often than not at the end of a cricket score.
This is a perfectly reasonable question to ask for someone who has never been to Ruislip. For those Gaels who have made the trip over, and more importantly to the thousands of Irish people who now reside in London, including those with Irish ancestry, that question would never even enter their minds.
One of County London’s many underage GAA teams.
Ruislip is a special place on championship days. Thousands of Irish and London Irish, from every county, will take the Victoria or Bakerloo lines out to North-West London, alighting to the sound of céilí music in the distance. Almost every county jersey will be spotted on the walk down West End Road to the newly redeveloped McGovern park, and for a few hours you are not in the teeming metropolis that is London, you are home, with your people.
The GAA motto of ‘Where we all belong’ could not be more apt anywhere on the planet than in Ruislip. In Ruislip you will see black and mixed race kids playing in the half-time game, lads with cockney accents in Leitrim jerseys, and old boys in their suits and flat caps, still dressing the same as they did when they left Ireland decades ago.
One could look at the final scoreline, or watch the short highlights package on The Sunday Game and ask “who benefits from a thumping like this?”, but that would be to mistake the GAA as solely a sporting organisation, but to the diaspora in County London it is much, much more than that.