LONDON CALL ON HARRY
Ex-Spurs boss takes Exiles’ minds off lack of facilities
HARRY Redknapp may have served up some Premier League glamour for the London footballers but he is likely to have found their surrounds more Premier Inn than The Ritz.
The visit of the former Tottenham Hotspur manager to London’s pre-Championship camp grabbed the headlines last week, but it hardly detracted from the challenge facing Exiles’ manager Ciarán Deely as he prepares his team for their Connacht Championship opener against Sligo.
With less than three weeks to go, Deely’s team find themselves moving from pitch to pitch as they prepare for their biggest game of the season and when Redknapp caught up with them last week, they were training on a 4G pitch at Ealing Trailfinders Rugby Club.
‘We are a little bit homeless,’ admitted Deely, who insisted that the pitches they have to train on are not fit for purpose.
‘They are all 4G soccer pitches. Those pitches are very heavy on players’ joints, particularly on their tendons when they are playing on those surfaces.
‘The dimensions on the pitch are 90 to 100 metres long and 70 metres wide so it is very difficult to recreate a proper Gaelic football situation and practice phases of play on,’ said the Wexford native, who wants Croke Park to provide direct investment to ensure an appropriate training pitch is developed.
‘I do believe that Croke Park could do more to help London in that we have no flood-lit, fulllength pitch on which to train in the whole city of London.
‘And that’s not just for the county footballers; be it kids, women, hurling or camogie, there is not one single pitch to accommodate what is an obvious need.
‘If such a facility was available, you can only imagine how much demand would be there across the whole city.
‘We are trying to compete against teams where such facilities are readily available, and yet we lost to Laois by just two points and we beat Wicklow this year. ‘Earlier this decade we almost beat Mayo and we are doing that without having an actual pitch to train on.
‘London is a special case and it should be treated as such. We are not talking about a new ground, just a proper training pitch and I hope it is something we can be helped with, where floodlights could be installed and a facility would exist which the county team and others could use.
‘I hope that Tom Ryan and John Horan can look at London’s case and give us a helping hand,’ added Deely.
The lack of facilities is not the only challenge; the other is to be found in the lack of exposure to game-time against high-level opposition.
While London enjoyed their most successful spring ever — they finished in fourth place and on five points in Division 4 of the Allianz League — they played just six games, after Leitrim was forced to concede a walkover.
And with challenge games proving problematic to organise under the new fixture schedule, Deely is trying to get his team up to speed by playing themselves.
‘We usually get across for a game but it is likely that will not happen this time. We are left with A versus B games.
‘We could try and fit in a game against a club team but the problem is that club teams are not operating at a high level at this stage of the season, so outside of facilities it is that lack of exposure that is a challenge.
‘Furthermore, it is very hard to develop young players in London, because they don’t have the chance to compete at minor or Under 20 level.
‘And ahead of the Championship, we would love to be playing a Division 2 or 3 team to prepare for Sligo, but we can’t be feeling sorry for ourselves and we just have to get on and deal with it,’ added the London boss.
Meanwhile, Deely admits that he is likely to pick up the phone to Redknapp, who had a stint as QPR manager where the London manager is employed, again prior to the May 6 throw-in at Ruislip.
‘I would hope to get Harry back in again before the Sligo match because I like to expose players to the insight that someone like that can offer.
‘They might be different sports but we are all in the one game and, for instance, it would be interesting for our players to hear how Harry prepared his players who played in the Champions League and were huge underdogs going in against Inter Milan and Juventus.’