London’s extraordinary feat was 23 months in the making

The result of the Gaelic football weekend didn't happen in Croke Park or Salthill or Newbridge. It will have no effect on the competitions that matter to the majority of the populace. It took place in front of a tiny crowd while everyone else was either watching Dublin lose to Armagh or just taking the responsible human decision to do something better with their Saturday night.

And yet for all that, there might not be a more extraordinary achievement by any team all year than London beating Carlow in Division Four. Michael Maher’s team were playing their first match together in 23 months. You think your county has had a disrupted last two years? They’ve got nothing on the London footballers.

Maher has a panel of 32 players. Of those, only 13 remain from the squad he had playing in the 2020 league. On Saturday night in Carlow, he handed nine players their league debut. Of the 26 he brought to Ireland with him, 11 were on their first ever assignment with the London footballers. In that context, merely putting a team together with any level of coherence would have been regarded as an achievement. Actually winning the game ought to have been a good distance beyond consideration.

“A lot of belief, a lot of character,” is Maher’s response to the question of how they managed it. “The fact that we had been out for 23 months was the undercurrent to the whole thing. We weren’t going to lie down after being so long without a game, so long waiting for that moment to come around. We’re thrilled but it’s just another building block really. Nothing is won or lost yet.”

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Burke’s introduction helps Dublin over the line

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Winning

Well, that's not strictly true. London did win the game, coming back from 10 points down to grab a 2-11 to 1-13 result at Dr Cullen Park. Never mind all the existential guff - this is the first time London have won their opening fixture in the league since beating Kilkenny in February 2011.

Even before the pandemic, London were always an easy mark on the opening day of the league. They never got to play in the pre-season competitions so they were always coming in colder than everyone else. They were a pipe-opening exercise, a handy runway on which to get up to speed. So when Carlow were 1-10 to 0-3 ahead early in the second half on Saturday night, they can be forgiven for assuming this was just like old times.

If they did, they reckoned without the pent-up energy and plain, honest lust for competition that London had brought over with them. Two years is a long time to go without finding yourself in a match situation. There’s no point spending all that time wishing you could get your chance if you shrink from it when it finally comes your way.

Now they have a win under their belts and a home game against Waterford this Sunday

“To come back like that is huge,” Maher says. “Absolutely huge. You can get very wrapped up in the scoreline sometimes. But it’s about performance. We were seven points down at half-time, yes. But when we showed the players the stats at the break, we showed them that we had had 14 shots and they had had 14 shots. The difference was that we had hit seven wide, three short and one off the post.

“Those were shots from good areas too. So what that told us was that we were playing well, we just hadn’t got our eye in yet. That allowed the players to go out and realise that if they kept doing what they were doing, it would come good.

“Before Carlow got their red card, we had kicked three points on the bounce. The red card undoubtedly happened at a great time for us. But all the happened was that the scoreline gradually came to reflect the way the game was going. The discussion was about trusting what we had been doing in training rather than anything to do with being seven points down.”

Squad

In the end, a prep weekend in Ulster a fortnight ago stood to them. They had played Down on the Friday night before facing off against the Armagh under-20s on the Saturday and Maher came away convinced that he had the makings of a squad again for the first time in two years. So it proved.

And now they have a win under their belts and a home game against Waterford this Sunday. London GAA have thrown open the gates to Ruislip, making it free entry for all as a nod to the end of their long period of exclusion. Maher dutifully says it's just another building block. But he knows it's more than that too. Knows it better than anyone.

“There’s no pressure on us. We have nothing to lose. We can’t get relegated, nobody expects us to win anything. We will still go into every game as underdogs, which is fine by us. But these lads deserve backing.

"People would have no idea what goes into giving over your life to train and play for London. On a normal day, you would drive from Dublin to Wexford in the time it takes these lads to get 20 miles across London to go training. They give everything to do it and I'm really proud of them."