Breadalbane Finance Community Rugby Story Of The Month … London Scottish
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CALCUTTA CUP morning and in many respects it could be a scene from 30 or 40 years ago, with a London Scottish ensemble hosting a ‘touring; team of old boys from Gordonstoun School in a match which is at once ferociously competitive and also undeniably 'social'. There is a sprinkling of 1st XV players on show, some attempting to recreate their glory days of a few years ago, others who perhaps don't prioritise training and conditioning with the same rigour, and a few who look like they may be sweating out the residue of the previous night's excesses. It is, in short, a classic international weekend clash which was once common place between amateur clubs with long-standing relationships played on Six Nations match-days in London, Edinburgh. Cardiff and Dublin.
But there's a couple of clues that confirm that we have not travelled back in time to the late 1980s or early 1990s, when London Scottish's place in the old established order was almost set in stone, as simultaneously one of the leading club sides in England and an important staging post for the Big Smoke’s tartan diaspora (with over 220 Scotland caps having played for the club at some point in their career).
First and foremost, this is not the RAG [Richmond Athletic Ground] but Kings House Sports Ground in Chiswick, a few miles west and slightly north of the London Scottish’s traditional home. Secondly, while the home side are stripped in London Scottish colours, with the iconic red lion badge on their right breast, this is not a team representing the club which currently plays in the RFU Championship, the second tier of the English league structure. It is, in fact, a whole different entity called London Scottish Lions, now in its seventh year, fielding two teams on a regular basis and a third when numbers permit, with the top side currently flying high in 'Regional 2 Thames' (one of 12 leagues which constitute the sixth tier of the English club structure).
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"The catalyst for forming this amateur club as a separate entity was when London Scottish decided to cut its 2nd XV back around 2010, which had repercussions we just couldn't factor in at the time," explains Ben Edwards, who is the club's fixture secretary, referee convenor and head of recruitment, among other roles. "It had a real flow-down effect because the guys who were in the 2nd XV and occasionally making the Championship team got hoovered up by other clubs in the area, and there are a lot of clubs in south-west London.
"And what we really didn't anticipate was that the third-grade guys playing on the amateur side of the club were looking at it and saying: 'Well hang on, where's my pathway? Because I'm only 18 or 19 now and I'm a prop who is going to come into my own when I am 24 or 25 but there is no next step for me here’. And we found that those guys started to drift off as well, or, in fact, be actively recruited.
"So, it left us with two social teams – really good guys – but the gap between the Championship and social rugby is massive, which meant we had this chasm, and we needed to address that."
The solution was the brainchild of London Scottish stalwart Paul McFarland (who passed away late last year) which involved setting up a whole new club which would be allowed to join the English league structure and start climbing through the levels (just as the original club was forced to do after Tony Tiarks plunged it into administration at the turn of the century). This has created the opportunity for the 1st XV to play at a competitive level which will challenge ambitious amateur players.
"We entered the league at level 10 – Herts/Middlesex League 2 – and we won every game with a bonus-point that year. We've now had four promotions in five years to get to level six, and fingers crossed we'll go up again this year [currently five points clear with three games left to play],” says Edwards.
"We’d like to get to level five, I think that’s a good spot for us, and what that means is we can offer guys who have come down for work – some of them with Scottish Premiership experience playing for teams like Ayr, Currie, Peebles, Watsonians, etc – a good level of rugby and a really great environment.
"One of the other things we do for our aspirational guys who think they can probably push up into the National Leagues is train with our semi-pro guys on a Tuesday night, and two of our young props have been called up to play at that level this season. Jack Parkhurst played against Exeter Chiefs in a pre-season match when he got 20 minutes against Scott Sio the Wallabies prop and did pretty well, and D’arcy Mulrooney played in the Premiership Cup against Harlequins and Ealing.
"So, that's been great for them, and while I think that pathway is tenuous at the moment, if we can get up another league then it becomes a little bit more aligned."
Meanwhile, the 2nd XV are currently top of the Middlesex Merit Table, there are ambitions to start a women's team at some point soon, and Andy Cunningham – the club's Honorary Secretary – hopes that the Lions' trip to The Greenyards in May to compete in the Melrose Sevens can help boost the under-18s programme.
"We're going to take a Colts team up as well which is a really important step for us because we had very good under-13s and under-14s teams, but we had a gap from under-15s up to under-18s,” he says. “So, that's something we've started to address this year, with a couple of really good guys taking on the coaching. We've had three matches – won one and lost two very narrowly – but the great thing is that they guys are improving, we're up to 25-30 players, and we're building relationships with some local schools which we hope will bring in another 10-15 players.
"So, I think taking a team up to Melrose will give us something to build towards there, and we're really looking forward to it.
"We’ve also got a sponsor, Velocity Trade, who are very keen on this pathway for lads who are coming up through minis, juniors all the way up to when they go to university and/or into club rugby, so that’s a very important thing and its good that they’ve come on board and been really supportive."
As an Australian who was persuaded to join London Scottish after bumping into an old pal from Sydney in Putney soon after arriving on these shores back in 2001, Edwards stands as testament to the club's ethos of embracing new players from anywhere and everywhere – but stresses that the historical link to Scotland remains and should always be celebrated and promoted.
"With the camaraderie, the social element of it, and the fact you’re playing for a club with such a great heritage even though I'm not particularly Scottish … I immediately thought: 'My God, what a great club to be associated with!'," he reflects.
"The big thing is that we're an exiles club. Moving to a new city is tough, especially a big place like London, and the purpose of the club has always been to provide a home for exiles. It’s not been to provide players for Scotland, or develop people for the Premiership, it’s been for people who’ve come from all different parts of Scotland to have a home down here, where they can play together and enjoy themselves.
"With that in mind, one of the things London Scottish has not done particularly well in the past which we’re keen to get better at is linking in with the universities up there. We’ve got a few guys who’ve been at Strathclyde Uni guys, and we're developing a link with St Andrews, but we need to find a way of saying to students in Scotland that if they are moving to London after they graduate then come along and see if you want to play for us."
Cunningham first moved to London from North Ayrshire in the early 1980s, served in the military living a fairly nomadic life until 2007, initially got involved at London Scottish about 10 years ago and joined the committee in 2018. "We’ve got guys from New Zealand, we’ve got Aussies, our inside-centre Jem Edwards is involved with Jamaican rugby, we've got plenty English guys as well, so everyone is welcome, but the Scottish connection is an important selling point for us."
"I think a lot of people in Scotland do forget about us, and that's perhaps down to us not being great at telling them we're here offering some really good rugby opportunities at this excellent facility, which we moved to in 2022 because there just wasn’t enough room for us at the RAG sharing with the London Scottish Championship team and Richmond as well.
"This is the old Civil Service Sports Ground, which was taken over by Kings House School a few years back. We lease the pitches from the school and a private company runs the clubhouse providing us with our own bar for. The staff are great, and we have really good nights in here after games. It has been great for us.
"It’s very social, the guys are closely knit, they bring their friends along to play as well, we put on various socials, and we’re just very keen for young lads coming down to London to make this place a home from home."
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