Club Priestnall
Priestnall Road,
Heaton Mersey,
Stockport,
SK4 3HP
Training times: 18:00-19:00hrs, Thursday
Dojo History
Manchester Goju Ryu karate club had its roots in a dojo founded by Sensei Mark Tsang back in 1992. Sensei Mark started learning Goju Ryu karate at the age of 11 and was a dedicated student, training for 7 days a week. Sensei Mark started teaching at the age of 17 and had a reputation for being tough and uncompromising. Not surprisingly then, he joined the Hong Kong army as a physical fitness instructor and later began working as part of the stunt team for Jackie Chan’s ‘Police Story Part 1’ movie released in 1985. After emigrating to the UK, he founded a club in Manchester and became part of an organisation headed by the legendary Shihan Leo Lipinski.
Sensei Mark returned to Hong Kong in 2003 and the club continued to run under Sensei Gary Cronnolley and Sensei Ian Bruckshaw. Following the death of Shihan Leo Lipinski, we were fortunate to have followed his appointed successor, Shihan Gurmit Singh, becoming a member of his IGKKF organisation in 2024.
Sensei Ian Bruckshaw bio
I began my karate journey in 1975 as a 14yr old at the Kodokwai Shotokan dojo of Sensei Rob Ferriere in Durban, South Africa. A year later, I was invited by a friend to train with the Goju Kai group under Shihan Leo Lipinski, where Sensei Stan Hart was teaching. It was my first taste of ‘dojo kumite’ and I was hooked! I resigned from my former club and asked to join the Goju Kai. The style felt more realistic than the one I had been practising, and the club at the time had a number of outstanding students, who later went on to achieve great things in the karate world.
The club was infamous for its kumite sessions on a Saturday afternoon, which was an ‘open to all’ students regardless of style or affiliation. As a teenage boy at the time, I joined in with those sessions with an equal mixture of excitement and fear!
My training became more sporadic as I started a job that had unsociable hours and a lot of travel, eventually taking me from South Africa to the Middle East and back to my birthplace in the UK where I eventually settled in 1989. During this time, I trained wherever I could find dojo’s (there was no internet in those days so it was just what you could find in the Yellow Pages or telephone directory). Despite that, I maintained my regular regime of personal training and the thread of passion that started me on this incredible journey.
Quite by chance I was at a Chinese restaurant in Manchester one evening when I noticed an advert on the notice board, all in Chinese but the unmistakable Goju Fist logo appeared on it beside a telephone number. I phoned it and that was my introduction to Sensei Mark Tsang who invited me to train with him. On my first training session I had a stark reminder of what I had been missing, as I remember being floored twice in 5 minutes during sparring with Sensei Mark Tsang and Sensei Gary Cronnolley who seemed to be able to target my groin from any angle! Despite the bruising encounter the dojo felt like home, especially after I discovered the club was part of Shihan Leo Lipinski’s group who, unbeknown to me, had relocated to the UK.
It was with great sadness a few years later, whilst sparring with Sensei Mark one day that he simply said ‘I am going back to Hong Kong’ we carried on sparring and that was it, overnight I went from being a student to a teacher, together with Sensei Gary Cronnolley who later had to withdraw due to a relocation of his business which made the commute impossible. Since then, I have been privileged to teach and be part of our karate community in Manchester for nearly 25 years with Shihan Leo as my mentor, who graded me to 3rd Dan in 2015. Since his passing, I have been fortunate enough to now be mentored by another giant in the Goju Ryu world, Shihan Gurmit Singh of the IGKKF.