COMING HOME

MARK BENSTED JOINED LONDON IRISH RUGBY CLUB AS THEIR NEW CEO AT THE START OF THE YEAR. FORMERLY CEO AT POWERDAY, THE COMPANY OWNED BY LONDON IRISH OWNER AND PRESIDENT MICK CROSSAN, BENSTED SPOKE TO BITA ABOUT THE CLUB’S EXCITING FUTURE FOLLOWING THEIR MOVE BACK INTO LONDON AS TENANTS OF BRENTFORD FC’S NEW STATEOF THE-ART, BRENTFORD COMMUNITY STADIUM.

It is hard to believe that a full year has passed since we played what turned out to be our final fixture at the Madejski Stadium in Reading. We are just about settled into our new home at the Brentford Community Stadium …… albeit with no fans currently permitted and plans for the ‘housewarming’ party still on ice!

Whilst it was sad not to say an official farewell to the Madejski, there is no doubt that our move back to London has breathed new life into the club, both on and off the field.

London Irish Rugby Football Club has been around since 1898, and from the early 1930’s has been embedded in and around West London. Soon after the game turned professional in 1996, the famous home ground at ‘The Avenue’ was deemed too small to stage professional matches, so the club had to find an alternative home venue. Initially in 1999, we had a very successful season sharing with Harlequins at ‘The Stoop’, so successful in fact that they showed us the door after just one year as they thought we were damaging their brand!

Two decades followed at the Madejski Stadium right up until March of last year when Covid brought a premature end to our last season in Reading. During this long spell away from London it is fair to say we have yearned for a move back to the capital and a closer link with our spiritual home. The chance to do so at a new state-of-the-art stadium as tenants of Brentford FC was the perfect opportunity to realise this dream and, in the process, provide a catalyst for the growth and future success of the club.

With a capacity of 17,250, the Brentford Community Stadium will play a crucial role in realising our ambitions, both on and off the pitch. A world-class, modern stadium giving our players every opportunity to showcase their skills, it will provide an enticing atmosphere and a great match-day experience for our supporters and will help grow our support base across the wider London Irish family.

With its excellent transport links, the stadium is ideally situated in the heart of the club’s traditional area of West London as well as for loyal supporters from the Thames Valley and beyond. Importantly, we feel the move will attract new rugby supporters from across the capital, perhaps those who have followed London Irish over the years but only occasionally made it out to Reading.

The return to the capital has presented us with a fantastic opportunity to really move forward as an off-field commercial operation. West London, as a significant economic sub-region, is home to a huge variety of businesses across the areas of White City, Park Royal, Chiswick, the emerging Old Oak Common/HS2 regeneration area and the Heathrow hub, in addition to those adjacent major businesses forming the ‘Golden Mile’ in and around the impressive redevelopment of the Brentford area itself. With such a concentration of major businesses on our doorstep, coupled with the wider corporate world across the City, we are well-placed to grow our business relationships and hopefully in so doing, create long-lasting value for all involved.

Interest in the club has grown significantly in recent months and building on that momentum will be key as life returns to normal. The scope for a wider connection with the business community, both in England and Ireland, is high on our priority list as we enter this new chapter for the club. We feel we have a real opportunity to expand the London Irish brand, engaging with up-and-coming companies across a wide range of industries and sectors, including construction, technology, manufacturing, and engineering, on both sides of the water.

The Irish communities across London and its surrounding areas will be at the forefront of our plans, as we look to engage and interact with a community who have been on a journey with us for over 120 years.

Under Declan Kidney’s guidance, we have an outstanding group of players, coaches, medics, and strength & conditioning staff all of whom are contributing to what we know will be an exciting future for the club. In Declan and Les Kiss, we have a wealth of rugby knowledge and coupled with a blend of experienced world-class players and an exciting crop of young players (who have come through our Academy structure), we feel we have the necessary foundation blocks in place to succeed and start challenging for major honours.

The mix of strong on-field performance coupled with the alignment of our off-field Partnership, Community and London Irish Foundation teams, are all integral to the future success of the club. The Community and Foundation teams already do outstanding work in the local communities, focusing on active ‘fun’ participation, rugby development, education, social engagement and inclusion.

In terms of our off-field activity, ‘community’ is at the heart of everything we do and whilst the restrictions over the past 12 months have paused a lot of work in this area, our #PoweringTheNHS initiative with Powerday proved to be a great reminder of how people coming together for the common good can create real benefit. This initiative made use of kitchen facilities at our Hazelwood training ground, cooking and delivering over 50,000 meals to frontline NHS workers across 17 hospitals during the height of the pandemic; a huge effort by all those who volunteered from Powerday and the London Irish team.

If 2020 has proved one thing, it is that rugby really needs its fans. Although our supporters – the Exile Nation as we like to call them – have not been with us in person, their spirit and passion has remained throughout the lockdown. The response from our Season Ticket holders to defer their tickets from this season to next season was incredibly helpful to the financial wellbeing and cash-flows of the club, with many also donating their outstanding credits from the previous Covid affected 2019/20 campaign. We will be forever grateful to the supporters who have stuck with us throughout this period.

Of course, there is now some light at the end of the tunnel, and we are excited about the prospect of welcoming approximately 4,000 supporters to our final home fixture of the season against Wasps in early June.

Season Tickets for the 2021/22 campaign went on sale in mid-March and we are hoping that the combination of the new stadium, excellent access, exciting rugby and a great match-day experience will see sales grow steadily through coming months. Hospitality opportunities – to both corporate and individual/family groups - have already proved attractive with initial sales being very encouraging. As the lockdown eases and thoughts start turning towards a return to full stadiums, we will be offering various packages to businesses and supporters alike, so register your interest soon if you would like to reserve space!

Sport plays an important role in business and bringing people together. We have enjoyed huge support from the Irish community over the years and particularly from Irish businesses, many of which are members of BITA. We very much want to expand these relationships, building new ones wherever possible and look forward to participating and hosting future networking events.

Contacts at London Irish Rugby Football Club:

Mark Bensted – Chief Executive mark.bensted@london-irish.com Jean O’Grady – Business Development Manager Jean.Ogrady@london-irish.com