Chris Lloyd, team manager at London’s Round Towers GAA Club, talks about the unique challenges involved in supporting Ireland’s national games abroad. Robert Carry reports
When thousands of people were streaming away from Ireland’s shores during the last century, a good indicator of how many had arrived in a given city was to look at whether a GAA club had been established yet.
“In the 1970s and ’80s there were up to 60 clubs in London,” says Chris Lloyd, team manager at London's Round Towers Gaelic Football Club, of his adopted city's GAA heyday.
Lloyd, who played inter-county football for Longford at minor level before moving to London in 1973 at the age of 19, adds: “The standard was a lot higher. There were a lot of county players playing in clubs in London.”
One of the clubs in place at the time that Lloyd first arrived in England was the Round Towers Gaelic Football Club, which had come into being in 1932 when its founding members, rather quaintly, had their first meeting under a tree in London’s Hyde Park.
The sheer volume of Irish GAA players in London at the time meant that many clubs could afford to restrict themselves to only taking on players from a particular county. Many of the founding members of the Round Towers club were from Kildare, and so membership was restricted to people who emigrated from the mid-Leinster county. Happily this rule, that today would have seen streams of disgruntled would-be GAA players piling into a ‘no-win-no-fee’ solicitors’ office, was lifted soon afterwards.
Since its initial training session in Hyde Park, the club has called a wide range of venues in the city home, usually using a local field and a nearby pub as HQ. In the early 1960s organisers acquired a pitch on Clapham Common, which they held until the 1990s when they relocated to a rugby club in Wimbledon. Next it was onto a council-granted pitch in Sir Joseph Hood Memorial Playing Fields at the city’s Motspur Park, before finally settling for a pitch-share with Sean Tracey’s hurling club at Mitcham.
Lloyd signed up when GAA was at its height in London. “I got involved with the Round Towers immediately on arrival and played with them for about 15 years,” he says, “and I’ve been involved ever since.”
Unfortunately for the club, the number of Irish people opting to move to London has declined rapidly in recent years, and many of the city’s GAA clubs have suffered as a result. “From around the 70 mark a few years ago we’re down now to about 26 members,” he laments.
Another problem Lloyd has noticed is that cheap flights between the UK and Ireland mean that a lot of the top players who do move to London can nip home at the weekends to line out for an Irish club. “When you came to London during the ’60s or ’70s you just couldn’t do that,” he says. “You could be years between visits home, but now you fly back every weekend to play football. A quality player would tend to do that these days.”
Lloyd admits that many in London’s GAA clubs have hoped to attract non-Irish players, but they have met with little success.
“The nearest thing we have to representation from outside the Irish community would be a few Australians who might be in London for a couple of years, they tend to get involved,” he notes. “They're background would be in Australian Rules and they would link up with us because of their sport’s similarities to Gaelic football, but we haven’t seen any of the youngsters from the Caribbean or Eastern Europe getting involved, especially when there are soccer clubs around.”
Lloyd, who is now a permanent fixture in London, where he works as an engineer, adds: “It’s a nice idea, but it would be very difficult to bring about. I would like to see more non-Irish people getting involved but the problem is getting them here.”
Luckily, Round Towers has tapped into a group that should see the club stay in existence for at least another generation, in the form of London’s second-generation Irish. “We have a lot of London-born lads that we get through our underage system and the majority of these would be of Irish stock,” says Lloyd.
The success of the underage programme, with the help of some prompting from Irish-born parents, has meant that over half of the club’s senior team is now made up of players born in London.
The club, which is one of the largest outside Ireland, has been marking its 75th anniversary this year with mini-tournaments involving teams from Ireland, golf plays and social events all running as part of the celebrations.
“In the 1970s and ’80s there were up to 60 clubs in London,” says Chris Lloyd, team manager at London's Round Towers Gaelic Football Club, of his adopted city's GAA heyday.
Lloyd, who played inter-county football for Longford at minor level before moving to London in 1973 at the age of 19, adds: “The standard was a lot higher. There were a lot of county players playing in clubs in London.”
One of the clubs in place at the time that Lloyd first arrived in England was the Round Towers Gaelic Football Club, which had come into being in 1932 when its founding members, rather quaintly, had their first meeting under a tree in London’s Hyde Park.
The sheer volume of Irish GAA players in London at the time meant that many clubs could afford to restrict themselves to only taking on players from a particular county. Many of the founding members of the Round Towers club were from Kildare, and so membership was restricted to people who emigrated from the mid-Leinster county. Happily this rule, that today would have seen streams of disgruntled would-be GAA players piling into a ‘no-win-no-fee’ solicitors’ office, was lifted soon afterwards.
Since its initial training session in Hyde Park, the club has called a wide range of venues in the city home, usually using a local field and a nearby pub as HQ. In the early 1960s organisers acquired a pitch on Clapham Common, which they held until the 1990s when they relocated to a rugby club in Wimbledon. Next it was onto a council-granted pitch in Sir Joseph Hood Memorial Playing Fields at the city’s Motspur Park, before finally settling for a pitch-share with Sean Tracey’s hurling club at Mitcham.
Lloyd signed up when GAA was at its height in London. “I got involved with the Round Towers immediately on arrival and played with them for about 15 years,” he says, “and I’ve been involved ever since.”
Unfortunately for the club, the number of Irish people opting to move to London has declined rapidly in recent years, and many of the city’s GAA clubs have suffered as a result. “From around the 70 mark a few years ago we’re down now to about 26 members,” he laments.
Another problem Lloyd has noticed is that cheap flights between the UK and Ireland mean that a lot of the top players who do move to London can nip home at the weekends to line out for an Irish club. “When you came to London during the ’60s or ’70s you just couldn’t do that,” he says. “You could be years between visits home, but now you fly back every weekend to play football. A quality player would tend to do that these days.”
Lloyd admits that many in London’s GAA clubs have hoped to attract non-Irish players, but they have met with little success.
“The nearest thing we have to representation from outside the Irish community would be a few Australians who might be in London for a couple of years, they tend to get involved,” he notes. “They're background would be in Australian Rules and they would link up with us because of their sport’s similarities to Gaelic football, but we haven’t seen any of the youngsters from the Caribbean or Eastern Europe getting involved, especially when there are soccer clubs around.”
Lloyd, who is now a permanent fixture in London, where he works as an engineer, adds: “It’s a nice idea, but it would be very difficult to bring about. I would like to see more non-Irish people getting involved but the problem is getting them here.”
Luckily, Round Towers has tapped into a group that should see the club stay in existence for at least another generation, in the form of London’s second-generation Irish. “We have a lot of London-born lads that we get through our underage system and the majority of these would be of Irish stock,” says Lloyd.
The success of the underage programme, with the help of some prompting from Irish-born parents, has meant that over half of the club’s senior team is now made up of players born in London.
The club, which is one of the largest outside Ireland, has been marking its 75th anniversary this year with mini-tournaments involving teams from Ireland, golf plays and social events all running as part of the celebrations.
