From Sunbury to Reading - The decisions we face

By BrianC
April 12 2004

The final article in this series sees us taking a look, venue aside, at the future facing London Irish. Just as in the past years many tough decisions have had to be made, in those to come there are many more facing us. What shape will London Irish be in five years from now?

I've tried hard to think about the major off field issues facing the club over the next few years and have come up with four issues. It must be stressed that this is a personal viewpoint, it is educated guesswork, no more no less. 

-         Crowd growth vs revenue

I first penned this item before next years prices were announced. In it I predicted a steep increase in ticket prices for next season. Given that has now come to pass the following has been rewritten with a view to the longer term.

The Madejski is getting busier each year but it is still some way off being regularly full. In order to encourage crowd growth London Irish have reduced both occasional and season ticket prices. Arguably this has had an adverse effect on revenue. This is one of the perennial issues that our club along with others in a similar position have to face.

To myself as an outside but interested observer it seems that this the pendulum has swung too far towards reducing prices. This was particularly the case in the first half of the season where two for one deals were available, on already low prices, for pretty well every home game. London Irish now seem to have acknowledged this. Next years tickets are substantially higher than last although still cheaper than two years ago.

Another impact of this price reduction has been the imbalance in numbers between the East and West stands. This season, regularly somewhere between 60% and 80% of the crowd have been in the East stand.

It is my guess that next season the club will be a lot more sparing with the number of two for one offers. Further, in the following few seasons, I feel they will seek to narrow the price gap between the East and West stands, probably by increasing East Stand prices by a greater percentage than those of the West. That said, the West will always command a premium over the East.

In the medium term it remains to be seen if the hike in ticket prices announced for next season will be enough to fund the development of the club. Again, only a guess, I think we will be facing above inflation increases in ticket prices for the following few seasons.

-         A fifth Province?

When Conor was appointed to club’s manager he stated that he would like to build bridges with the IRFU. To get to the stage where they would consider us an outlet in the ZP where Irish qualified players could play with as good a chance of being picked for Ireland as if they were playing in Ireland. This has not happened, frankly with the contrasting contractual arrangements between English and Irish rugby it was always unlikely.

London Irish is an English club, playing in an English league. It runs an RFU academy and is currently supplying many more players at various representative levels to the England setup than to Ireland. Indeed the two London Irish players who regularly make first team appearances for Ireland, Awesome and Bish, have been associated with the IRFU since before the professional club/province structure was established. Barry aside there does not appear to be any London Irish player close to an Ireland call up.

Sooner rather than later our club is going to have to abandon any ‘fifth Province’ aspirations.

-         Irish Identity

After our move to Reading some opposition supporters took to calling us names such as ‘Thames Valley Boks’ (Obvious) or ‘Not Nots’ (Not from London, Not Irish). Such names have never really stuck with us, perhaps because we don’t seem to get upset by them. Indeed we even proudly sing about what would normally be the most obvious name to label us with – ‘I’d rather be a Paddy….’. That said, the question of our Irish identity has arisen before and will no doubt do so again.

At the time of the London Scottish/Richmond ‘merger’ I was amongst the minority, particularly so because I am Irish, who favoured a name change. My feelings at the time were that a change to ‘London Exiles’ would be more likely to encourage those who had previously supported the other clubs to join the family. The newly formed LISC lobbied hard to retain the London Irish name, whether they influenced the decision or not we all now know that the name was not changed.

In one of the earlier articles in this series I stated that the club was ‘Less Irish’ than in our days at Sunbury. This is undoubtedly the case on the field however it is likely that the IRFU’s decision to encourage players back to Ireland had a significantly greater impact on this than any decisions made within London Irish. It is also arguable that the majority of our supporters nowadays have little or no Irish connection, so why stick with the name?

It is an overused phrase but London Irish has now established itself as a brand. The success in merchandising testifies to this. Just as you don’t need to be Irish to drink in an Irish pub or to raise a glass on St. Patrick’s Day, you don’t need to be to support this rugby team. Robin Clive’s (OxonRob) stroke of genius in coining the phrase ‘London Irish is a state of mind’, really does sum it up. For generations to come this English club, albeit one with an Irish flavour, playing in an English/British/European or whatever league, will still bear the name London Irish, of that I am now convinced. It will continue to have an Irish flavour.

-         Continuing the move to Reading

The professional club still finds itself in somewhat of a limbo between Sunbury and Reading. The administration side of things has now mostly moved to Reading however those they are administering for, namely the team and coaching staff continue to be firmly Sunbury based. On match days the team gather at Sunbury then take a coach to Reading. We must be the only premiership team, perhaps even the only professional team in either soccer or rugby, who take a coach to our own home games.

There are many good reasons for the professional team’s continued links with Sunbury. Just as the administration side of things eventually found the move to Reading inevitable I feel that gradually, perhaps even to the point of selling off the ground itself, we will see a further shift to Reading. As I write this I can see people, perhaps amongst them the most senior in the club saying ‘Over my dead body’. I do not believe this is on anyone’s agenda at the moment. Just that, assuming we remain playing in Reading, there will be an inevitable move towards there.

Whatever the future brings both on and off the field there are lots of challenges ahead. The future is bright, the future is….. green!