London Irish currently play in the 17,250 seater Brentford Community Stadium sharing it with EFL Championship side Brentford FC. The stadium opened in September 2020 at a cost of £71 million with a view to expand in the future and develop the surrounding area of Brentford, London.
Table of Contents
Stadium Guide by Rugby Tripper
History
Plans for a new stadium in Brentford date back to October 2002 with Brentford FC requiring better facilities than the ones they had at Griffin Park. The original plans were to move nearer to Kew Bridge in order to build a 20,000 seater stadium for the club.
Talk about a new stadium went quiet until February 2008 where an announcement was made in order to build a new stadium. A 7.6-acre site was purchased in 2012, however, paperwork and complications took another 5 years before work was able to start on the ground.
In 2016, news broke out of London Irish also wanting to move into the stadium. Their previous ground the Madejski Stadium was in Reading rather than being more centrally in London and therefore, the club wanted to relocate.
Brentford Community Stadium was built in order to replace Brentford FC’s old stadium Griffin Park which is planned to be demolished. This also meant that there were appropriate facilities for rugby union side London Irish to move in and share the ground with Brentford FC. In the future, the owners of the stadium would like to build a new underground station nearer to the stadium in order to simplify matchday travelling along with flats and houses to redevelop the surrounding area.
The first game played at the stadium was a 2-2- drawn pre-season friendly between Brentford FC and Oxford United. The first rugby union game was between London Irish and Leicester Tigers with the home side emerging victorious 22-9 in an impressive display.