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London Irish lodge application with RFU to play in 2025/26 Tier 2

Ben Loader, Ollie Hassell-Collins and Henry Arundell after London Irish's final match in May 2023 (Photo by Alex Davidson/Getty Images)

London Irish have become the latest fallen club to express an interest in revival and play in next season’s 2025/25 Tier 2 league in England. The Exiles were one of three Gallagher Premiership clubs to go bust during the 2022/23 season, following Worcester Warriors and Wasps into administration.

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It was last month, September 27, when the RFU set an October 13 deadline for clubs to deliver applications to take part in the revamped 14-team second division for next season.

While there have been rumours that Wasps will apply, Worcester went public with their application on October 1 and now London Irish have followed suit with a 170-word message from Daniel Thomas Loitz that was posted on social media on Wednesday.

Speaking in a 98-second video, Loitz said: “Hello, London Irish supporters. My name is Daniel Thomas Loitz, the director and principle director of Hokulani Limited. Today I have some exciting news to share with you.

“We have officially submitted an expression of interest to the RFU to join London Irish in the Tier 2 Championship league 2025/26. This is a major step in our journey to restore the club to the top level after 12 months of painful suspension.

“I am proud also to say Hokulani Limited has been named the preferred bidder for the London Irish brand, assets and intellectual property by the administrator, the ReSolve Group.

“We offer strong financial backing and we are thrilled to also have the support of former staff and players, including our ex-rugby chairman Kieran McCarthy. Your passion as supporters is what drives the revival and together we are eager to bring back London Irish to the rightful place in professional rugby.

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“Thank you for your continued support and let’s embark together on this journey. London Irish, coming back stronger.”

The London Irish Foundation have since launched a petition on change.org to galvanise support. “By signing this petition, you will be showing your support for the club’s revival and helping to ensure the legacy of London Irish lives on,” read the introduction.

“Together, we can bring the team back to the Championship league for the 2025/26 season and continue the proud history of this iconic club.”

Unlike Worcester and Wasps, who both collapsed just a couple of fixtures into the 2022/23 season, London Irish managed to play all their games in that campaign. Their 17-14 win over Exeter Chiefs at Brentford on May 6, 2023, resulted in a fifth-place finish and qualification for the following season’s Investec Champions Cup.

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However, they were suspended a month later by the RFU and haven’t played a professional match since then as takeover attempts at the time to save the club failed.

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Mike 73 days ago

So, Worcester want to be in, and Irish want to be in … nothing from Wasps yet? Arguably the biggest / most successful name amongst the clubs that went under but were never able to find a sustainable home once the game went pro. Despite the noise about magically reappearing in Kent, I wonder if that’s it for them at the top levels of the game.

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JW 3 hours ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

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