LISC AGM 2017 – Report

On Wednesday 25th October the LISC held it Annual General Meeting in the Team Room at Hazelwood. It was good to see a healthy turnout, with around 50 members in attendance.

Prior to the festivities we were visited by not one special guest but two! Brian Facer, the new Chief Executive at London Irish popped in to say hello as he was completing a board meeting before Nick Kennedy joined us.
After some prepared questions on injuries and match preparation, Nick took questions from the assembled LISC members on recruitment, the season so far including changes to the defence, and team selection over the next few months:
  • Nick talked about the changes in defence from the start of the season in time for the Stade Francais trip, how they have incorporated that into their training regime and how it didn’t work for the home match versus Edinburgh.
  • He also spoke to how important Mike Coman and Fergus Mulchrone are to our defence as our team’s top communicators and organisers and how their loss has been felt.
  • When recruiting players how in addition to match video, how they conduct interviews with the player and up to 5 interviews with team mates and coaches. For Saia Fain’gaa they spoke to Matt Giteau and James Horwill amongst others.
Following this talk we proceeded on with the LISC AGM.
Kieran Madigan stepped down as Chairman and his long association with the LISC almost since our inception in 1998. Once again, thank you Kieran for all you’ve done down the years! The committee now is made up of the following individuals:
  • Chairman – Steve Jones
  • Vice Chair / Hon Secretary – Keighly Osborne
  • Hon Treasurer – David Blowers
  • Membership Secretary – Alex Hoenig
  • Committee Members – Kevin Mothersole, Sarah Jackson, Bryan Monument, Adrian Martins, Duncan Kendall
During the AGM the committee took questions from the assembled members including on possibly raising membership dues or allowing for additional donating.
Coach travel and its poor take up was also brought up and it may be that the LISC in the future operate less as an operator of coach travel and purely offer advice on travel, grouping London Irish supporters at away grounds and appropriate watering holes. As highlighted above with the Gloucester coach, it seems our Membership is just too spread out to confirm significant numbers for coaches.
Future events were mentioned as being in the planning stages including one with our new Chief Exec, another in the line of Meet the Referee and possibly a themed Meet the Player evening with international food. All to be confirmed!