Maher's men making light of familiar London obstacles

The London senior footballers have been one of the success stories of the GAA season so far and a team whose results I have always watched with interest having lived there for nine and a half years.

During my latter years in London I immersed myself in the GAA community, loving my time playing football with Tara GFC and hurling with St Gabriel's.

I was fortunate to represent London in football for a number of years. However, my London inter-county hurling memory isn’t as positive. My sole championship outing was an 8-27 to 1-05 defeat against Antrim.

During the week I was talking to some of my London-based friends that were at the Wexford loss. They told me how gutted they were driving home from Ruislip feeling that they should have won. What an amazing turnaround in expectations.

To put some context to this, during my five years playing with the Exiles we won two games - against Limerick and Kilkenny - and lost every other game.

By the end of the 2020 league, London had no points on the board and a score difference of - 42 after registering only 56 points. The next closest team in the table was Waterford on five points.

It’s fair to say London were way off the pace. Following a forced 700-day break from competitive games London are now joint top of Division 4 with six points from four games.

They have already scored 52 points with three games to go and have a scoring difference of +2. Their manager Michael Maher, from the Round Towers Club in south London, had a harsh introduction to inter-county management in his first game by in 2020 losing by 5-09 to 0-10, but he now deserves huge credit for where they have come.

The London story is an interesting one and I am not only referring to the senior footballers performances in