Fulham Irish

Fulham Irish GAA Club was formed in January 2006 by a group of young Irish people who were working in the city of London. The group wanted to give people a chance to play Gaelic Football in London without travelling to the far West or North of London to existing clubs. The club were granted permission by the London County Board to participate in the London Intermediate Football Championship but had to begin in the lowest division of the London league.

The club first fielded a team in April 2006 in a league game which they won at Ruislip against North London Shamrocks. The club attracts many players due to its central location. In 2006 the club created history by winning the London Intermediate Championship and the British Championship in its first year. The initial Fulham Irish Committee was spearheaded by Liam Barry (County Limerick) Chairman, Michael Rice (County Kerry) Secretary and John Doyle (County Carlow) Treasurer. Ken McGrath (County Waterford) was the first club captain. By the beginning of the 2008 season Fulham Irish had progressed to the top level of all competitions in London. David Connolly (County Monaghan) became Captain in 2008 and led the club to their first Division 1 League Title together with the Tipperary Cup. The club suffered just one defeat in 2008, a 1 point loss in a replay of the semi-final of the senior Championship. Fulham Irish started a Ladies Team in 2008.

The Ladies team progressed to the London Junior Championship Final in their first year and lost the final by 2 points to the long established Holloway Gaels. In 2009 they reached the Junior Championship Final but lost out to a stronger Kingdom Kerry Gaels side. 2010 was the year for the Ladies team as they had a clean sweep of all Junior trophies, winning the Junior Championship Final against Clonbony 3-16 to 0-2, the Junior League Final against Dulwich Harps 3-13 to 1-2, The Tom O Connor Cup, The Southwark Festival Cup and the Anne Dunning Memorial Cup. The club is currently one of the top clubs in London and has developing an underage structure along with developing its own Gaelic Football pitch in Fulham. In 2011 it was agreed that Fulham Irish would form a Hurling Team. In common with most GAA clubs in London, it has attracted many new players from 2009 onwards as a result of renewed emigration from Ireland.

Fulham Irish won the London Senior Football Championship on October 16th 2011. A tremendous achievement for a Club just over 5 years old. The Club will progress to play the Connacht Champions in the All Ireland Club Quarter Final on December 2011. Sean Maguire from Lavey in County Cavan captained Fulham Irish to its first Senior Championship. The winning team lined out as follows:

Declan Traynor (Meath)
Gary O'Hare (Down)
Conor McClean (Down)
Martin Conway (Derry)
Aidan Savage (Antrim)
Shane Mulligan (Monaghan)
John Boyce (Galway)
Lorcan Mulvey (Cavan)
Paddy Walsh (Carlow)
Stephen Molumby (Dublin)
Harry Murphy (Mayo)
Iomar Barrett (Galway)
David Connolly (Monaghan)
Sean Maguire (Cavan)
John Ryan (Tipperary)

Subs Used: Fearghal McVey (Derry), Noel Nicholson (Galway), Marty Hughes (Tyrone), Padhraig McKernan (Down), John Reilly (Mayo).

The Fulham Irish hurling team reached the London Intermediate Championship Final in their first year losing by 5 points to a strong Michael Cusack's side who had been beaten in the final the previous year. The Fulham Irish Ladies team won the London Intermediate Championship in 2011 12 months after winning the Junior Championship.

Bald Eagle has arranged a Q&A session with the Fulham Irish PRO John Doyle. If you have any questions you would like to ask feel free to message Bald_Eagle. Hopefully this will be a regular feature on GlobalGAA.

can i ask = would Bobby Zamora give it a go at FF? They might even get the few bob off AlFayed.

Folks, as you can see we are trying to start an "In Focus...." section where we, the posters of the site, interview GAA personalities from club and county level. This is an opportunity for us to get closer to GAA personalities and clubs by asking prescreened questions, any questions you have should be PM'd to me. We will email the questions off to the relevant party and publish the interview on this site for you to view and comment on.

John Doyle, PRO of newly crowned London Champions Fulham Irish has kindly agreed to be the first to participate in our first "In Focus...." interview following a request via our Twitter page, GAA Fan has placed Wikipedia information on the history of Fulham Irish for you to look through and draw some questions from.

The rise of Fulham Irish in UK GAA has been nothing short of meteoric, the won the British Junior Club Championship in their first year in existance and were narrowly knocked out of the All Ireland Series. In their second year in existance they only lost 1 game all year, the London Senior Championship Semi Final Replay, and won the London Division 1 title also. The following 2 season were slightly more trying for Irish as they dropped back to Division 2 however in 2011 the completed one of the most impressive Championship wins in history, regardless of county, when they won the London Championship from Division 2 and they have just won the Division 2 title also. To be honest, no one gave them a prayer in their Championship this season.

Unlike other British clubs, Irish have established a Ladies team, who in their forth year in existance have added the London Intermediate Championship to the Junior title they won last season. This season saw them add a hurling team to the club and they narrowly missed out on the Intermediate Championship when they lost in the final.

If you have any questions you would like to ask John Doyle about the birth, growth, development and future of Fulham Irish GAC then please PM me with them under the title Fulham Irish, any questions appearing in this thread will be ignored!

No other GAA forum has had the opportunity to undertake anything like this so please think of some questions we can ask. This is an amazing chance to grow the forum, its member base and our reputation in the GAA world.

All questions will be credited to the poster/s that asked them.

5 Questions already folks, some brilliant ones too! Keep them coming, i want to send of at least 15 questions for John Doyle to answer for us, lets see if we can do it today!

Up to 10 now folks, keep them coming! No one has yet asked about their Championship win or their upcoming game with the Connaught Champions.

I'd say you'll have 11 or 12 soon so!

We're still stuck on 10 questions folks, is there anything you would like to ask the PRO of the newly crowned London Senior Football and Ladies Football Intermediate Champions? Then PM it to me!

OK folks, you have until Monday morning to get your questions PM'd to me for forwarding to Fulham Irish PRO, John Doyle. All questions will be credited to the poster/s that asked it and we have some brilliant questions so far from you, keep them coming as this could be a good feature for the site.

Keep your questions coming folks, you have until mid-day to get your question PM'd to me for Fulham Irish. Feel free to ask more than 1!

Many thanks to all who took the opportunity to ask the Fulham Irish PRO a question or two. All questions have now been sent and we are awaiting a reply, however it may take a while as he is on holiday for a week.

The interview will appear as a sticky on this section ASAP.

This section will now be locked.