The Hazelwood training ground may be London Irish looking to the future, but if the past is anything to go by it has a lot to live up to.
Ask anyone associated with the Exiles about The Avenue and they’ll no doubt have a story to tell you. From rubbing shoulders with movie stars to ashes being spilt in comical fashion, The Avenue was host to many a tale.
Many of them involved a man by the name of Fitzy and his eponymous bar — and of course a plentiful supply of Guinness and whisky. By all accounts it was a rickety shed just that used to be the ground’s changing rooms when Irish first moved to the site in the early 1930s.
It became a drinking den that grew increasingly sophisticated, with Fitzy fining anyone who swore inside the bar and donating the proceeds to charity, with some saying the total ran into the thousands.
Richard Harris and Richard Burton would pop in to Fitzy’s when they were in town, with Harris regularly putting £50 behind the bar. Comedian Dave Allen was also a regular visitor and once kept then Exiles captain Len Dineen out past a time his wife would not have been happy with.
Allen had an ingenious solution to the problem — he would write Dineen a note absolving him of any blame. The only issue being no one could find any paper to write it on, so Allen had to scribble it on the back of Dineen’s driving licence.
When Fitzy died in the mid ’70s, his wish was to have his ashes scattered across the pitches at The Avenue. Hundreds turned out for the ceremony and as it reached its conclusion there were many signs of the cross and Holy Water dispensed.
At the same time, London Welsh’s coach was pulling in for that afternoon’s game causing one confused committee member to quip: “Bloody hell boys, the Irish are taking this one a bit seriously!”
Sticking with ashes, another famous story from the years at The Avenue included one group taking to the pitches using an urn as a rugby ball. The urn went flowing through the hands from one end of the pitch to the other and as the group reached the tryline, one member dived for the whitewash — spilling some of the contents as he did!
Fr Patrick Devine, from the Shalom Centre for Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation in Kenya, blesses the ball that was carried by relay from The Avenue to Hazelwood. Also pictured are Exiles captain George Skivington, Fr Paul Davies, Parish Priest of St Mary’s Sunbury on Thames and London Irish committee and members (Photo: Malcolm McNally)The ashes of many people were scattered across the pitches at The Avenue during the Exiles’ 83-year stay. So when London Irish moved to Hazelwood, one thing that President Dave Fitzgerald wanted to do was to symbolically move the spirit of all those who had their ashes scattered at their former site.
“There were a lot of people who had their ashes spread on the ground or in the surrounding areas. We felt it was an appropriate thing to do to ceremoniously move the spirit of those people from the Avenue to Hazelwood,” he said.
“The idea was to hold a short religious ceremony conducted by Father Patrick Devine, an Irish missionary and friend of the club and Father Paul Davis, the local vicar. We had representatives from the families of people who had their ashes scattered at the former site.
“We symbolised the moving of the spirit by a relay from The Avenue, with first-team captain George Skivington passing to Wild Geese captain Eddie Fahey and so on all the way down to the under-six captain. It culminated with the ball passing to the Mayor of Spelthorne, Suzy P. Webb, who cut the ribbon at Hazelwood.”
Sadly, The Avenue was already a building site when the relay started with work on redeveloping the site beginning soon after the Exiles left. Fitzgerald said the club had hoped to have conducted the official opening of Hazelwood before the bulldozers had moved in on the old training ground.
“We talked about the opening before the move. We hoped to get it done before they dug up the pitch at The Avenue but we wanted to be settled at Hazelwood.”
