LONDON IRISH hope to take a significant step towards becoming a major force in the Courage League. A consortium of Irish businessmen have made a £1 million offer to strengthen the club's financial base and guarantee their future in mainstream English rugby. Each investor is a leading member of the Irish business community and is an existing member of the club.

The consortium consists of Geoff Read, founder of Ballygowan spring water; brothers Dermot and Kevin Clancy; John Stackpole; John O'Neil; Maurice O'Connell; Ken Kielty and John Conlon. They will initially bring £1 million to the club, and hope to attract another £1 million by the time the club holds an extraordinary general meeting (e.g.m.) on June 27th.

They are confident they will be able to bring in the other £1 million to take the total to £2 million of investment. The club also believe that further investment is likely to come in down stream.

At the e.g.m, which will move from its traditional venue at Sunbury to The Rose Room at Twickenham, approximately 1,400 members will vote on the proposal (there are an additional 300 plus members who do not have a vote). If the proposal is accepted, £500,000 worth of stock will be offered to the members as a priority, something the club hope will be taken up with enthusiasm.

The chief executive of the club Duncan Leopold, explained the move. "The way it is organised will mean that finance will come into the club and that the investment will come from club members," he said yesterday. "That is important, as it allows members to become involved. That is why they have been given priority shares.

"The objective is to strengthen the club and give it the required financial muscle to compete at the top of the Courage League. It will also enable London Irish to move forward by investing in mini, Junior and youth rugby so that structures will be in place to secure the future of the club.

"There has been an effort to make the change as seamless as possible, but we believe that this is a unique solution to the problems that the club is likely to face in the future," Leopold said.

Various efforts have been made to encourage club members to take up their share options with preferential loan facilities organised with Bank of Ireland, Allied Irish Banks and Anglo Irish Bank Corp. General member shares will be priced at £100 each, with each member allowed to invest up to a total of £25,000.

Unlike other Courage League Clubs, such as Northampton, Richmond and Newcastle, which are effectively controlled by just one person, the objective of the London Irish proposal is to spread the ownership throughout the membership of the club. It will be seen as a step towards the status of a public limited company and will have a proper corporate structure when everything is in place.

London Irish struggled last season to adapt to the standards set by most of the other sides in division one, and survived only after an inspired performance against Coventry in a relegation battle at the end of the season. Coventry had beaten London Irish in the first game of the playoff series played at their home ground and needed only a draw in the replay at Sunbury.

The home side, however, emphatically won the game 28-7 to maintain their status in the top flight of the game.

At that stage in May, Leopold alluded to new moves that would hopefully avoid another such dramatic end to the season and also indicated that London Irish would have to go shopping for new players to improve the overall standard of the squad.

Willie Anderson, who was controversially brought into the club as the main coach mid season, is in the process of making those decisions. At this stage, however, the club is not at liberty to announce if any new players have been acquired for next season.

Leopold and the consortium have been working on details of the project since December. There are no plans afoot at all to move the club from its prime location in Richmond, which is just 20 minutes from Heathrow Airport. Club sources also say that the only discussions that have taken place have been focused on development of the club on the current site.

Guinness, who have just completed the first of a three-year deal with the club, will continue on as the main sponsors.