Osterley in west London, where the busiest of the traffic flies overhead from nearby Heathrow airport, doesn’t look much like the breeding ground for a GAA miracle. A mile from the Underground station on the Piccadilly line is the home of Grasshoppers Rugby Club, the ad-hoc nerve-centre of London’s preparations for Saturday’s Connacht SFC meeting with Padraic Joyce’s Galway.
On Thursday, there’s a noticeable clip to the session as a cocktail of Cockney, Cork, Laois and sundry other accents rise to the pitch of training. It takes a moment for the realisation to dawn: this isn’t nearly the length and width of a regulation GAA pitch.
“It’s a huge drawback,” says one of the team’s rising talents, Josh Obahor (24), and the embodiment of the cultural diversity driving football’s resurgence in the so-called 33rd county.
“You’re never training on a Gaelic pitch in the winter months. When you step on to a rugby pitch and you realise how much smaller it is compared to a GAA pitch, it’s very significant. As a player, positional awareness is so important. When you step on to a big pitch like Ruislip on Saturday, it’s difficult to line up those measurements with playing on a rugby pitch. I think what we really need is a floodlit pitch in London as soon as possible. That said, I don’t think we let it hinder us,” Obahor says.
That’s a recurring theme. Drawbacks, disadvantages and distance are easy to reach for but Obahor and London eschew the first refuge of the weak – the excuse. Arsenal is a 30-minute drive from his northwest London home, but from the age of 10 he was drawn to Gaelic football.
“I know it sounds surprising, but the GAA has always been really accessible for me in the area that I live in. There’s a massive Irish community there with football and hurling taught in my primary school. All my friends played it, so it was very easy for me to kind of get into it. My dad’s Nigerian and my mum’s Irish [from Douglas in Cork]. I know a lot of people drop out of Gaelic games when they get to 16 or 17, but I always stuck with it because I’ve always loved playing it.”
Obahor is bright and articulate and offers an interesting endorsement of GAA values at a time when some of its younger talent is being seduced by the AFL and the NFL. “I love soccer but as the years went on I started to play more GAA and loved it more. I started prioritising it. It’s a really different dynamic [to soccer], but for me it’s just the people.
“In Parnells, my coaches always pushed me. I didn’t really feel that playing soccer, I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because less people play it in London, so it’s more of an intimate environment, but for me it always felt like more of a family thing with the club that I played for.
“I can only speak really highly of the community in the GAA. I’ve never felt out of place, always welcomed. I’ve always felt pushed to go and play at the highest level. The folk here just want you to succeed and do well.”
London joined the Connacht championship in 1975 and have only ever managed three victories: one in 1977 and two in 2013, against Sligo and Leitrim. Their Féile footballers (Under 14) reached a Division One final last year and Obahor has good memories from playing underage through the grades.
“I played in two Féiles, at that time the underage split into north London and south London. They’ve since brought that together and they seem to be flying at the moment.
“Once you get to minor, there’s a tangible link to the senior grade. The Junior team playing before us on Saturday is totally London-born. It shows there’s a clear pathway there.”
When Obahor started, it was in goals, filling in the numbers, in his own words. “I didn’t have many natural skills, and one of the hardest to accomplish is that rhythm of doing a solo, bouncing the ball and running with. It’s quite unnatural if you started by playing soccer.
“So learning that kind of rhythm was really hard. I played Gaelic at university as well and we were trying to teach lads how to do those things. It’s not easy. It feels like something that needs to be taught at a young age to understand the fundamentals.
“I have a decent left leg, so that might be a natural ability, but I had to learn the actual basic skills from scratch and be really diligent.”
He’s clearly made remarkable progress, starting at centre forward in London’s final Division Four League game in Carlow last month. Though Michael Maher’s side lost five, they also won one (against Waterford) and drew one (with Tipperary) – there are no stop-the-scoreboard blowouts these days.
“We were very competitive in most, if not all of the games. The quality is really high, which is obviously a great environment to be in and in terms of the coaching staff with Michael, they’ve made it a really professional set-up.”
Even getting to training is an obstacle course few intercounty players experience at home. Obahor works in central London with Train Lines PLC, and it’s a hectic sprint home to Harrow afterwards to double back down to west London through traffic and the Tube to make training for 7.30.
“It’s a big commitment playing for London, but relatively speaking, Harrow is probably a good location given where we play. There are lads living across the river in South London, in Clapham, where it really is a huge commitment. We have good Irish lads playing, and you need that. But having as many London players as possible pushing to be in the senior team is what you want.
“A lot of lads in Ireland, they come over for a few years, but they might be leaving again. But with most squads, they are together for years and years and I think you need London-born lads to be the foundation of that.”
And Galway coming to town on Saturday. A miracle in Ruislip? “Buzzing for it,” he says. “Last year I came on as a sub against Sligo and barely even touched the ball, but it was a great buzz to even get on. Ruislip doesn’t often fill to capacity like it will on Saturday, so obviously a massive privilege. We go one game at a time, but the fact you are now guaranteed four championship games minimum is a great boost.
“Not that we are looking beyond Galway. You play what’s in front of you before you start re-evaluating. You never know with these games ...”
