SINCE 2018, LONDON’S club champions have entered the senior Connacht football championship, and each year, as you might expect, they have been turfed out at the first time of asking.

The 2026 champions, Fulham Irish, host Mayo’s Castlebar Mitchels in Ruislip at 1pm on Saturday, and club co-founder and London senior county selector John Doyle sums up the size of the task ahead fairly succinctly.

“It’s a massive game like. It’s one step away from a Connacht final, but in saying that, no London team has ever won a Connacht game.”

The luck of the draw has produced something of an unlikely rivalry in the last few years of Connacht football.

“Every year for the last four years, London has drawn the Mayo champions. So North London Shamrocks played Ballina twice, we played them once, and now we’re playing Castlebar,” explains Doyle.

“We lost by quite a big amount to Ballina in 2023, but Shamrocks have actually been in both games right up until the last knockings and lost them by smaller margins.”

Those results, along with Fulham Irish’s two-point victory over Shamrocks in the county final, have given the Carlow man a reason for hope on Saturday.

“Ourselves and North London are kind of on a similar level, so on that basis, the eight points that the bookies are suggesting are between the teams is a mark that we need to outperform.”

Only founded in 2006, Fulham Irish have an all-Irish born panel, though their underage set-up has now grown to around 250 players, with teams from U5 up to U13. They’re trained mostly by their original players from the 2006 intermediate and 2011 senior championship-winning teams.

There are some strong influences from Down, Dublin and Galway in the current panel, with their central location in the city giving them an advantage in attracting top Irish talent in London.

“Fulham Irish as a club is not really aligned to any county,” says Doyle. “We align ourselves more to the guys that are coming to work in the city of London, the financial district and stuff like that. That’s why we train nearer the city, so it’s easy for lads coming from work.”

That’s helped them land some important players in recent years: “We have a lot of players who would have played underage for their county, but because of work, they’ve come to London. They haven’t had the chance to move their football career on at home, but then they get the opportunity here… and if work allows, to go and play for London.”

Fulham Irish had to travel to Mayo the last time they made it to this stage, but this year is their turn to play host. Even though the club have been helping Castlebar in making arrangements, the headaches of this unique away day could give the London side an added advantage:

“It definitely does [give an advantage],” admits Doyle. “We’ve had some meetings with the Castlebar committee, all the logistics of what they have to do for the weekend – where everyone is and finding their hotel, how they’re going to get around London, and getting the coach, when do you want to turn up and where are you going to go after?”

Regardless of where the game is played, Castlebar, whose panel includes All-Ireland winning stars Paddy Durcan, Donnacha McHugh and Bob Tuohy, are massive favourites to win the tie and meet the winner Salthill Knocknacarra or St Brigid’s in the provincial final.

“The fact it’s in Ruislip gives you a small bit better chance of winning the game, but there’s no doubt Castlebar are overwhelming favourites for the game. It’ll be a monumental effort on our side to go out and win that game.”