Mayo’s opening day in this year’s championship over in Ruislip on Saturday had large echoes of a similar Connacht SFC quarter-final fixture two years ago across the ocean in New York.

In both cases, it provided a meeting point between the large contingent from home over for the weekend and the significant Irish diaspora living in the city in question, the day offering a taste of championship football wrapped up in an occasion that had a carnival air to it.

The beer tents and the food stands were doing a brisk business at McGovern Park all Saturday afternoon, with the good-natured crowd milling around the marquees constantly running into friends and acquaintances. It was, for all the world, a slice of Ireland west of the Shannon transported to a corner of north-west London.

Having never got to this fixture before – despite living for a number of years in London a long, long time ago – I was obviously curious to experience the atmosphere for myself. My appetite had been whetted two years ago when I finally ticked the Gaelic Park box and so it made sense to knock Ruislip off the bucket list this year.

What was immediately striking was how impressive the facilities are at McGovern Park. The playing surface looked immaculate and the stand that runs most of the way down one side of the pitch is a recent enough addition, with a fine clubhouse on the grounds as well.

Indeed, Colm Boyle, whom Rob and I ran into after the game, said that the place has been completely transformed since Mayo last played in Ruislip a decade ago. There was, he said, no stand then and supporters lined up on the pitchside behind a cordon of rope. Things have moved on a lot since those days.

This got me thinking about London’s place in the scheme of things within the GAA.

Overseas units will always face challenges that aren’t a factor back at home. Assembling a county panel and surmounting the logistics of keeping the show on the road in one of the great global cities on the planet is no mean feat.

On Saturday’s evidence London are doing much more than simply surviving.

The significant costs facing counties making the trek over to New York has put the future of that fixture under the spotlight, not least given Jarlath Burns’ public musings about how New York might be accommodated within the championship if the long-standing arrangement of hosting a Connacht SFC quarter-final over in the Bronx is to be discontinued.

In one sense that raises questions about the other overseas curtain-raiser in the Connacht championship. It only takes a cursory examination of the facts, however, to conclude that, big day out for the Irish besides, the two fixtures are very different.

Unlike New York, London compete in both the league and the championship – in hurling as well as football – and their track record is a decent one. Their footballers have taken scalps in the provincial championship and we all know well that we were extremely lucky not to be added to that list fifteen years ago.

Emigration to the US is now a very thorny issue and the days of significant numbers of young Irish people relocating stateside are long over. That’s not the case for emigration to the UK, however, and London continues to be a place that many from this country are moving to, even if nowadays decisions to do so are largely ones based on choice rather than necessity.

This means that London GAA can still call on new talent coming over on an ongoing basis. Their numbers are also being boosted by local-born players of Irish descent – Shay Rafter being an obvious example – with this less transient cohort of great importance to the county team’s long-term development.

At a personal level it was enormously uplifting to see the obvious rude health of the London operation in Ruislip at the weekend. Their footballers gave an extremely decent account of themselves and London GAA put their best foot forward in hosting their biggest event of the year.

What was even more striking to see was the self-confidence and pride within the GAA community in London that was on show at McGovern Park. The positive impact that this must create within the wider Irish community over there is self-evident.

While England has been good to successive generations of Irish people, at a time when Ireland itself couldn’t – and sometimes wouldn’t – be, it’s a relatively recent, and hugely welcome development that the Irish living over in England have come out of the shadows.

My time in London coincided with the difficult days towards the end of the Troubles, long before there ever was an annual Patrick’s Day parade over there, in an era when most Irish people didn’t feel comfortable to advertise their roots or to put their Irishness on show publicly.

How different this is now and, as a former emigrant, Saturday’s gathering in Ruislip struck me as an obvious example of this very changed world.

Even in those very different times, London was good to me in my years there and it was a wrench to leave it behind when the opportunity came to move back home thirty years ago. It’s a city I still feel enormous affection for and which a small part of me will always call home.

So going back there at the weekend was, in a curious way, a kind of homecoming. Now, having at last experienced Connacht championship match day in Ruislip, my sense is that London GAA’s impressive development in recent years provides them with very solid foundations for future progress. This won’t be the last big day out we’ll have over there.