This week the 131-year-old club accepted voluntary liquidation, but heart can be taken from their wonderful history and the example of their neighbours Richmond
The red dragon was still fluttering above the clubhouse at Old Deer Park this week as the veterans of Richmond Lawn Tennis Club, suitably swaddled against the chill, played gentle mixed doubles on their new all‑weather courts. In the shadow of the tall pagoda, a benign sentinel on the other side of the wall separating the playing fields from the botanical wonderland of Kew Gardens, a lone groundsman steered his tractor back and forth, the rotating tines of his aerator cutting into the firm going. In the mid-morning gloom, a couple of cricketers were practising in the nets.
All perfectly normal on this piece of land, once a park attached to Elizabeth I’s Richmond Palace and still owned by the Crown Estates. Except that by the entrance on Kew Road, above the turnstiles with their cracked glass and broken locks, the signboard that normally provides information on London Welsh’s next fixture was ominously blank.
Related: Richmond at London Irish a reminder of Premiership promise and unfairness | Robert Kitson
Related: London Welsh go into liquidation but hope for semi-professional return
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