Paddy Hughes was Public Relations Officer for the London Irish Rugby Football Club for several years. He brought great energy to the job. It was essential because rugby was about to go through a huge sea change switching from the purely amateur game to the era of fully professional leagues. Paddy courted all the lead rugby writers in UK and, as a result, London Irish has never had more publicity than it had at that time. Indeed, it was a major factor in attracting Ireland, Scotland, the British Lions, the NZ All Blacks and the Wallaby world champions to London Irish’s HQ at Sunbury for several high profile, week long training camps.

Paddy with David Kirk, captain of World Cup champions, the New Zealand All Blacks Paddy wrote all the match day articles in the programmes for home league and cup matches. This included tributes to and assessments of visiting teams, previous 1st XV match reports, player profiles and a great variety of club and other rugby news. He also wrote reams of interesting articles and fed them to national and local press in both mainland Britain and Ireland. The Irish reports were crucial at that time for the Irish Rugby Football Union were not exactly in favour of London Irish after years of petty altercation. Paddy’s articles had a lot to do with bridging those differences and casting London Irish in a much better light publicly. It wasn’t coincidence that London Irish’s international contribution went up markedly in those years. Four of the club’s backs became Irish heroes - full back Jim Staples, fiesty winger Simon Geoghegan, centre David Curtis and scrum half Rob Saunders. A host of other London Irish players went on to win caps after them. Irish rugby fans everywhere became thirsty for the weekly reports from London Irish. Paddy [right in blazer] with the British Lions at London Irish Another big break through was with the Irish press in London. Paddy managed to persuade the ‘Irish Post’ to break with tradition and become less parochial. Previously, they had only reported Gaelic games results and other Catholic orientated sports news. Paddy argued that London Irish rugby was the biggest and most successful Irish sports story in Britain. Soon small articles appeared. Then action photos. Then half page match reports. Now the stories cover several pages and support from the Irish community in the south east is second only to Bath and Leicester. Now London Irish rugby is right up at the top with the best in the northern hemisphere.

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