Heineken Champions Cup Club focus: London Irish

When London Irish run out onto DHL Stadium for Saturday night’s Heineken Champions Cup game against the Stormers it will be their first appearance in South Africa since they toured here in 1977, but South Africans are well known to the club who currently play out of Brentford.

Brendan Venter played most of his provincial career for Free State (the Cheetahs) but he played for the Stormers in 2000 and was a star turn in the London Irish team both before that and afterwards. The former Springbok’s career at London Irish encompassed 64 appearances between 1998 and 2003.

From 2001 he lived in the UK and doubled as player coach, and was in the starting team when London Irish achieved their greatest ever triumph in the professional era - a win over Northampton Saints in the 2002 Powergen final against Northampton Saints at Twickenham. The Powergen was an Anglo/Welsh knock-out competition featuring 12 Premiership clubs and four Welsh clubs.

While Venter was coaching at London Irish he gave a first coaching opportunity to Gary Gold, who he had become acquainted with during his time playing for Western Province and the Stormers. Gold initially filled the role of forwards coach but then took over as head coach when Venter left in 2003. Gold was head coach at London Irish until 2005.

Venter returned to London Irish as technical director in 2016 and served in that role before handing over in 2017 to Declan Kidney, a former Ireland national coach who is currently the London Irish Director of Rugby.

Incidentally, London Irish’s head coach is Les Kiss, an Australian who worked in Harry Viljoen’s Springbok management team back in 2001/2002.

Viljoen was often criticised for his coaching appointments but he must have known a thing or two as Kiss is highly rated now within the coaching environment.

And with Gold of course going on to coach WP and the Stormers before taking up the role of assistant to Springbok coach Peter de Villiers in 2008, there is a fair amount of cross-pollination between London Irish and both the Western Cape and South Africa.

Grafting in the heat ?? pic.twitter.com/vjlO73rvHg

— London Irish (@londonirish) December 14, 2022

HISTORY

London Irish followed on from London Scots and London Welsh in becoming a club made up of working and student exiles from the home countries, with their first game being played in 1898 against Hammersmith. London Irish won 8-3.

According to Wikipedia, the turn of the new century was a great time for London Irish with the club firmly solidified in the London Club Roster but this would be some of the last years of normality for the team.

With the commencement of World War I, many of the players enlisted with Irish Battalions in their homeland for deployment in mainland Europe. In 1916, remaining players and members returned to Ireland to fight in the Easter Rising and many who joined regiments did not return.

Pre-season tours became popular and in 1977, the London Irish made history in South Africa when they became the first touring side to play a host of mixed race teams.

Since the professional era began in August 1995, London Irish has only lifted one piece of major silverware, the aforementioned Powergen Cup in 2002, with 75 000 people at Twickenham to watch the match.

Since then, London Irish did enjoy relative success in Europe in 2005-06 when they reached the final of the Challenge Cup, where they were beaten by two points by Gloucester.

Since the 2020–21 season, London Irish play at the Gtech Community Stadium, in Brentford, Greater London. The stadium is owned by Brentford FC who also play their home games there.

The ground is a 17 250 all-seater capacity stadium which opened in 2020. All London Irish home matches are generally played at Brentford.

Prior to 2020, the club played at the Madejski Stadium in Reading, Berkshire for 20 seasons between 2000 and March 2020 when the 2019–20 season was suspended due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

CURRENT FORM

London Irish were in the Championship, in other words in the second tier of English professional club competition, for a while, and only returned to the Premiership in 2019.

However, they have made steady progress since then and qualified for the Champions Cup by finishing eighth in last season’s Gallagher Premiership.

Irish showed what they could be capable of by putting up a great show before going down by five points to French champions Montpellier in the opening round.

They have South African Bernard Janse van Rensburg as one of their go too players, but will be missing former Argentina Pumas captain Agustin Creevy, the talisman of the team, against the Stormers due to the suspension the veteran hooker is serving following his red card against Montpellier.

Getting some work done in SA ????

?? DHL Stormers pic.twitter.com/9SNu4bhZ89

— London Irish (@londonirish) December 13, 2022

Before that, Irish won 39-17 at home against Newcastle Falcons, a game that followed on from a narrow defeat away to Leicester Tigers, who made it to the Champions Cup quarterfinal round in 2021/2022.