Formed for Irishmen working / studying in London. London Welsh and London Scottish were also senior clubs.
Played against London French and am also aware of London Nigerian and London Cornish. Any other "exile" clubs? In this day and age the whole concept `of a club aimed at a particular nationality probably wouldn't be legal!
The "Not Nots," I love it! It's like in the NFL, two teams have the words "New York" in their names, and neither of them practices or plays in New York. There is a team that plays in New York, but they don't have the words anywhere in their name.
Quick follow-up - is the Greene King IPA league always the league to and from which teams are promoted/relegated?
Yup,
The English leagues are structured so that, theoretically, any club could be promoted from the lowest lowest league all the way to the premiership, and vice versa.
The premiership does have a bunch of hoops to jump through for clubs being promoted into it though - certain stadium regulations (seating numbers, safety standards etc.), which can be an issue for clubs wanting to get promoted (London Welsh, for example, had to move from their ground to share with a football club as their grounds only held 7,000 and the minimum standard is 12,000).
It goes:
Premiership
Championship
National League 1
and then from there it starts branching down, so there's National League 2 North and National League 2 South, and it keeps branching out until you get leagues like Midlands 5 West (North)
There are many who dont like relegation and promotion and would rather ringfence the premiership so clubs there could develop without fear of going down. But on the other hand about 9 seasons ago Exeter Chiefs were promoted to the prem and now are the form team and have been in the last 3 prem finals winning it once. So arguments on boths side but the debait has been had many times.