Dublin footballers to avail of London Irish's facilities

NEWS ROUND-UP:THE DUBLIN footballers' championship preparations will continue at the London Irish rugby grounds in Sunbury this Saturday before playing a challenge match against the local Parnells club in Ruislip on Sunday.

The weekend is primarily about fulfilling commitments to the county’s primary sponsors, Vodafone, as they will spend Friday with the McLaren Mercedes Formula One team who are also sponsored by telecommunications company.

With London Irish’s season ending last week, with a sixth place finish in the English Premiership seeing them miss out on the play-offs, the professional training facilities in Surrey are fully available to Pat Gilroy’s panel, who can take full advantage of a state of the art gym and manicured pitches.

“It is a great sign that the relationship (between GAA and rugby) has changed,” said London Irish spokesman Paddy Lennon yesterday. “This is the first high profile GAA team to make use of Sunbury, but we have long connections with Gaelic games with the London hurlers even coming in to put on a demonstration game for our players.”

In rugby’s amateur era the London Irish squad was made up mostly of Irish people settled in England, but nowadays it is a multi-cultural group.

Still, there remains some connection to the GAA with veteran secondrow Bob Casey hailing from a hurling background in his native Kildare while their former Leinster hooker Brian Blaney is a cousin of two-time All-Ireland winning (1991 and 1994) Down footballer Greg Blaney.

Despite the continued existence of the rule banning non-GAA teams from using GAA owned grounds, there is no barrier preventing Gaelic football or hurling squads utilising other sports facilities with many panels having pre-championship warm weather camps in environments that mainly cater for professional soccer and rugby clubs.

Current Munster club champions Nemo Rangers were the most recent case when they were accused of facilitating an Irish rugby squad session last year, although they argued that Declan Kidney’s team actually trained at an adjacent complex.

Meanwhile, in another announcement on this summer’s championship television coverage, BBC Northern Ireland have released details of their live matches, which starts with Sunday’s meeting between Donegal and Antrim from Ballybofey.

Last year, BBC Northern Ireland showed every Ulster senior football championship game live, but will only be allowed show five games this summer – the other four being the meeting between Armagh and Down, on Saturday, May 28th, and then both semi-finals and the final.

Speaking on this announcement, Páraic Duffy, GAA director general, said: “This year a slightly smaller number of games will be broadcast live across all television platforms in an effort to free up some time slots and assist our clubs in the organisation of their competitions.”

Finally, Leitrim’s John McKeon is extremely doubtful for their Connacht championship opener against Sligo on Sunday week. The experienced defender missed the league after suffering a broken collarbone against Mayo in January.

Forwards Ray Mulvey (back) and Brian McDonald (knee) are also doubtful, but manager Mickey Moran is pleased with his side’s preparations. “We have really had to rebuild the team since last year, but I could not be more pleased with the work and progress the lads have made during the league.”