The London Gaelic Football team pictured before this year's Allianz Football League Division 4 clash with Limerick.
By John Harrington
Thirteen of the London panel that will face Galway in Sunday’s Connacht SFC quarter-final were born and bred in the city.
That’s a considerable demographic shift from the usual make-up of London panels which over the years have traditionally been staffed by economic migrants from Ireland.
This cockney revolution is the product of some excellent work being done in schools and clubs across the city.
But it’s not just an admirable development, it’s a necessary one.
London team coach Michael Maher, himself a born and bred Londoner, explains there is now an onus on the London county board to produce homegrown players rather than rely on migrants.
“I think it's well documented that the number of players transferring to London has gone down I the last five years, year on year,” Maher told GAA.ie.
“So the number one for us is to have a pathway of players coming through. That's very important. Certainly for the younger players who are in London to be able to look up to the senior team and be able to realise that if i'm good enough and work hard enough then there is a realistic path-way.
“Probably going back 10 or 12 years that pathway was never there and you might have one London-born player on the panel every couple of years. Whereas now without the London-born players we wouldn't really have had a squad this year.
“So it's going to become ever more prevailing year on year as numbers do dwindle down of lads coming over that players within London are growing up with a desire to, number one, play for London, and, number two, believe that if they are good enough then they'll be given that opportunity.
“That's something that we've tried to instil this year within the group.”
The South London football team that won Division 2 of the 2018 John West Féile Peile na nÓg.
Maher has done great work on the ground in London in recent years both at schools and club level.
He’s a teacher in St Paul’s Academy where Gaelic Football is a major component of the sporting curriculum and has also been one of the driving forces behind the South London team that has consistently been a medal-winning machine in the Feile Peil na nÓg.
A Division 5 team when they first started out in the competition in 2007, this year they will compete in Division 1 having won the last two Division 2 titles.
What makes the South London success story such a compelling one is that, year on year, their teams are almost exclusively made up of young players with no Irish background.
Therein lies the future too for both London senior club teams as well as the London county senior football team.
“We've got two development squads at U-14 and U-15 in North London and South London,” said Maher.
“I'm over the South London panel and I would say traditionally 90% of that panel has got no Irish background at all, they'd be mainly of African descent.
“Look, what the games promotions of the last number of years has tried to do is put Gaelic Football into schools and open it up to kids of any background.
“I think that's important, because whilst numbers are obviously dropping year on year in terms of people coming over here, the numbers of second and third generation Irish people are dropping down as well.
“So, it is important that we're opening this sport up to every kid. It's taken off big-time in schools over here. You only have to look at the ABC (All Britain Competition) tournament that's held every year all over the UK.
“Kids of all different backgrounds are now playing Gaelic Football and the hope is that eventually some of the players that are now U-14 will make a breakthrough soon. It doesn't matter if that kid is of Irish descent, English descent, or African descent.
“If they're good enough they'll be given that opportunity to play.”
London captain, Liam Gavaghan, is a born and bred Londoner, as are an increasing number of his team-mates.
Years from now, this 2019 season may be regarded as the beginning of a new era for London Gaelic Football.
There’s been a large turnover of players from last year and the greatest influx yet of native-born Londoners into the panel.
Considering just how much of a relative clean slate that team manager Ciaran Deeley and his coaches were starting with this year, they’ve put some impressive foundations in place in a relatively short period of time.
London only won one match in their Division Four campaign, but they were competitive in all of them and conceded less than any other team in the Division.
Defensively they’re a solid-looking outfit, but as a work in progress Maher is well aware that the next step for this team is to develop a more potent attacking threat.
“We had a lot of injuries to crucial players during the campaign at the attacking end of the pitch, but defensively we were excellent,” he said.
“We gave ourselves a platform to compete in every game and have an opportunity to win games.
“We probably just weren't ruthless enough taking the chances that came to us. But, certainly, in big games like in Carrick On Shannon we held Leitrim scoreless for 25 minutes nearly and dominated the first half of the game but just didn't have the cutting edge you need to be winning those games.
“The building blocks are certainly in place. But while we were very pleased with our performance at one end of the pitch, we know at the other end of the pitch it's just a matter of time in terms of the players gelling together.
“I think the Wexford game where we did get the win that was the last time we had a fully fit squad available to us.
“After that we were always missing two or three players due to injuries which stunted our progress a little bit.
“We were unfortunate in that sense, but from where we were in October when we were putting a brand-new squad together, if someone had said to us that we'd compete in every game we'd have taken that.”
The London footballers pictured at training this week ahead of Sunday's Connacht SFC quarter-final against Galway.
London hope to have their strongest team available for Sunday’s Connacht SFC quarter-final against Galway, but no-one is seriously expecting them to pull off a shock.
A routine Galway victory is the standard prediction, but within the London camp there’s a steely determination to give the Tribesmen a serious game of football.
“The mindset is that we're going to focus totally on ourselves and give 100 per cent effort,” said Maher. “Where that takes us is then out of our hands, but we're going to try to control the controllables.
“We're going to have our team in place and our system in place and the players will give it absolutely 100 per cent.
“The focus is on ourselves. All the hype is on Galway.
“No-one is even considering this a match for Galway. That's what we intend to do. We want to bring Galway into a contest whereby they go away afterwards saying that they actually had a contest, whether we win, lose, or draw.
“We want to be ready to give 100 per cent ourselves, give a good account of ourselves, and control what we can control. After that, you never know what could happen.”
Whatever does happen on Sunday, you get the feeling that London are in the process of laying solid foundations they will be able to build on handsomely in the years to come.
