"I was homesick for 10 or 12 years," Paul Coggins says on a deafeningly quiet day in the west. The London manager had flown to his home province for no more than a few hours, to participate in the Connacht Council's championship launch. It took place in the province's sparkling new centre of excellence in Bekan.
Although Coggins has flown into Knock Airport more times than he can remember, it is very rare that he would find himself in Ireland in midweek, the schools in session and the towns very still. He says he always feels the same when he flies into Knock – “It would give you the tingles” – and the experience never fails to summon a familiar clash of emotions.
Unexpected treat
His parents were able to travel down from Cloonfad for the afternoon and they had a cup of tea with their son. The whole day was a bit of an unexpected treat for Coggins. His only regret was that he would not make it home to his constituency before the polling booths closed in the British general election that evening. Like most Irish in London, he is immersed in the city while retaining a keen interest in “home”.
“I’m still homesick at times . . . every day you would think of the parents and lucky enough they are still alive. I have a sister here and two brothers. I have two in England as well but you know, you do miss it. And it was an awful wrench to leave my club, Michael Glavey’s after all I went through with them.”
Coggins belonged to the tidal wave of recent graduates who fled Ireland in the late 1980s. He studied sales and marketing and tried his best to stay, scanning the newspapers for job adverts, which were scarce and sending out his CVs and playing football. Most of his friends had left Cloonfad and he was hearing periodic reports of how much fun life was in England.
“Of course you are drawn. The funny thing is that most of them have come back since. But I am also happy that I did it. You know . . . well, Anne mightn’t be so happy about it . . . but I met the wife. We have two lovely kids, John Paul and Patrick. And I met so many people in London over the years and in the GAA, all the different players. So I wouldn’t change it. But you do miss your own.”
That theme is what Sunday’s championship in Ruislip revolves around. On one level, Coggins is delighted by the progress that his native Roscommon have made this year and expects a big invasion by his county men.
“Not just those living in London, I am talking about from all over Britain. It is a huge day culturally because people come out to meet exiles that have been there for years. London accents all over the place. Grandparents with children. That is what life is about. It is a meeting place, there is a band and food and all the rest. It is not all about hardship and worries and mortgages. That is what I ask the players to do at training: just forget about all that stuff.”
In that respect, this overseas fixture is a bit like the annual jamboree in Gaelic Park in the Bronx except that London have been doing their best to make things sticky for the home counties.
Under Coggins, they have radically increased their overall victory percentage since they joined the Connacht banner in 1975, beating Sligo and Leitrim on their fabulous run to the provincial final in 2013 and adding handsomely to their lone summer win over Leitrim in 1977.
Valid participants
Coggins played on the 1999 exiles team managed by Tommy McDermott which scored 1-8 against then All-Ireland champions Galway and he reckons that the seriousness of the approach to that season was key in making those involved with London regard themselves as proper and valid participants.
Coggins spent last year putting a frame work in place to try to make sure that his team had as many advantages as the counties they played again. He asked Kieran Deeney, the former Wexford player who now works with QPR to get involved. Jenny Kirby, the former basketball international, is taking care of statistics. Marie Dillon is looking after diet and nutrition. Paddy McBrearty takes care of logistics. Mick Crossan, the London-Irish RFC stakeholder, has been enormously helpful in making their facilities available. Sometimes London train there, other times they met at Harrow.
“In the Harrow. Yes. They are great. It is a big rugby school but they do have an idea of what we are about now. Mike Marsh is my contact there over the past few years and he is more than helpful. But Harrow have held seminars and I know Barry Solan was over giving a talk so they do know of Gaelic football. But we will have our own place in Ruislip soon and that will give us a sense of home.”
Gathering an intercounty squad scattered all over London twice weekly is basically a matter of faith. They could all find a hundred excuses to not be there if they wanted.
Coggins sometimes consoles himself that the travel demands placed on players in big counties like Kerry or Donegal are equally punishing.
“It could be worse than the Tube. At least you can relax on them. If you get a seat. But it is a challenge. And once they part ways after training and melt back into London, the idea of ‘county’ disappears. That is the big disadvantage.”
Every time Coggins comes home he can sense it. When he goes to Cloonfad, he knows precisely where he is. “The county and the club is your identity, yeah.”
Transferring that to London is a little bit more complicated. That, for Coggins, was the lasting importance of London’s 2013 adventure. Winning matches created a sense of identity for them. After the drawn game against Leitrim, he took the team into a huddle but hadn’t a hope of making himself heard as well wishers surrounded the teams.
The faces are what he remembers. In London, people he had known for years who were entirely unaware of his connection with the GAA began talking to him about it. His profile was raised, which was strange for him. “I would be shy enough. People don’t really know that but I am quite a shy individual.”
Autograph thing
When he went to his in-laws in Creeslough, his mother-in-law caught him unawares by handing him a piece of paper and instructing him to do his autograph thing. “I wasn’t expecting that. Put it this way, when I first came into the house it was far from my autograph she was looking for.”
In the past few years, Coggins set up a new business. He has been in London long enough to see a complete metamorphosis of the traditional Irish experience, with the strongholds of Kilburn and Willesden completely transformed and young Irish graduates arriving to pursue promising opportunities rather than to merely find work. He has met many of them down the years: Irish men who went home once every summer or didn’t go home at all.
“They should be remembered now because they brought money into this country when there was nothing. People think that there were fellas over there wasting it all. And there are a few to whom unfortunately that happened. But not enough was ever done for them and I do think with a bit of help lives could have been saved.”
Visits home and conversations with friends have created the vague sense that Ireland is slowly recovering from the economic distresses of the last seven years. “But there are people still leaving here every day of the week,” he points out. “Some of us can’t vote on things that are going on here. I hear people talking about what is happening but I would like to see more action.”
It is not something he can control. The twin demands of work and London football are all consuming. His boys are big football fans: Patrick follows Manchester City, John Paul was “unfortunately hypnotised by Man United”.
Anne takes the boys to football and Gaelic training as he is mostly immersed in the senior team. Given the efforts to improve the support structure around the team, they were disappointed by their league results.
He kept a vague eye on Roscommon and saw them motoring up the league table through the spring months.
“We were caught up in our own league. But I saw they were doing well. It is great to see. I have to think positively about what London are trying to do. Roscommon are on top at the moment.
“There is no pressure on us. We have to go out in Ruislip and do our job and we will do that. We are a good championship team and we have a tradition for that now. It is a day. It is one day. It is a game of football with a green field and a white ball and 15 lads against 15.”
