The Beating Heart of Phibsborough: How Bohemian FC Refuses to Sell Out
In a world of sterile corporate activations, Dublin’s fan-owned club offers a masterclass in community, politics, and front-foot football.
Bohemians FC, a Dublin-based football club, is a living, breathing embodiment of progressivism. In a sporting world punctuated by a sort of conservative business ethos, driven by bottom-line maximalism, where politics and sport don’t mix and are often not even in the same room, Bohemians have embraced everything from Palestinian Statehood to LGBTQ+ rights and everything in between.
I wasn’t sure how the club could pull it off, because I vividly remember MLS clubs trying to co-opt the BLM during Covid. It was, at best, hamfisted and transparently there just to tick a box. DC United printed shirts with victims of police violence, only to leave out people from the DMV area. Almost immediately, it reeked of corporate activism watered down to avoid offending, but done with just enough care to avoid accusations of not recognizing causes central to their fanbase.
Bohemians, or Bohs as the fan base likes to call them, are different. And that is immediately clear when walking around the ground to scope out the murals dotting the neighborhood. Two prominent murals leave no doubt. The first is a painting in support of Palestinian statehood along the northern wall separating the ground from terraced attached housing. And the second, nearly caddycorner from the previous one, is a mural dedicated to Hind, the young Palestinian girl killed by Israeli soldiers.
It helps, too, that Ireland’s general political ideology tends to lean leftward. The PM and parliament have recognized Palestinian statehood. And there tends to be more labor-friendly policies. Of course, nearly a millennium of British colonialism has embedded a palpable anti-imperialist sentiment, too. It was this distinct atmosphere that drew me to Phibsborough in the first place.
A Groundhopper’s Paradise
But it was more of a part of a long-awaited trip to the Emerald Isle than one driven by political brotherhood. I was in Dublin to celebrate my birthday, a sort of solo trip to hit reset and have a moment or two away from the hustle that life brings with two young children. My itinerary included bar hopping, a food tour, a trip out to Tullamore to catch a hurling match, and general efforts at immersing myself in the culture.
One of my mates in DC owns an Irish bar that I liked to frequent when I lived there. It helped that he was a Liverpool fan, and so I started heading there for matches. When I was planning my trip to Dublin, I reached out for suggestions. A Bohs match was one of the first things on his list, as was a trip to Kavanaughs, also known as Gravediggers, a twenty-minute walk north of the ground, famous for its coddle stew and lack of music, with the sound of conversation providing the soundtrack.
But tickets are becoming hard to get because the club is building a new stadium right where the old one is. This season will be the last in its current form. Folks like myself, into a bit of football tourism, and locals alike want to catch a final glimpse before the next phase begins. Crumbling, austere, but full of the kind of character you’d expect from a stadium of its age, it’s in much need of an upgrade. It’s the sort of place that harkens back to a bygone era of standing room only terraces. In fact, the Tramway End still has the crush bars emblematic of that culture. No one can occupy that now–it was sold off and shuttered, but that doesn’t prevent folks from hanging banners and whatnot from the barriers.
It has a sort of cult following, too. Standing around the ground as I waited to enter, snapping photos of the aforementioned murals, I heard several different languages being spoken–different regional dialects of German, American English, British English, and possibly some Scandinavian languages, though it could have just as easily been a group of locals speaking Irish.
The family next to me, as I sat in the Des Kelly Stand, was from Allentown, PA. We struck up a conversation because I was wearing a St. Louis Cardinals hat, which in a world full of Yankees caps stands out and has been known to precipitate conversations. For what it’s worth, the family’s daughter was living in Dublin after studying at one of the local universities for grad school. So, they go to matches whenever they are in town.
Leaden Skies and Front-Foot Football
“There are few football grounds in the world where you can smell the beer, hear the guitars, and see murals of Bob Marley and local poets all in one place. But then again, there are few clubs like Bohemians,” James Callan wrote in a recent breakdown of the club’s overall business strategy.
As for the match itself, fans were blessed with what I would argue is the finest soccer weather. In its purest form, football requires a slight chill in the air. And though I would prefer a sky that threatens rain, the sort of pattern I came to expect during my time in Ireland, leaden skies gave way to sunshine. Sea gulls continued their flight around the field, swooping down at times as the match was in play. And at one point, one nearly collided with a ball driven skyward by a clearance.
The match play was far more sophisticated than I expected, too. Bohs played on the front foot. Passing patterns that led to dangerous passes in behind, resulting in clear-cut chances. As is so often the case in some of the smaller leagues, teams prefer to play in a safe, tightly regimented shape, with work rates increasing only to keep it, rather than pursuing any measure of success in the attacking third. Instead, the Dublin club charged forward, knocking diagonal balls across the pitch, buttering the bread, and rarely put their foot on the ball to kill off a moment.
For the neutral, it meant an exciting match on the edge of my seat, eager for each new opportunity. And maybe that was the case for Bohs fans, too. Drogheda absorbed and hit on the counter. They even had the best chance of the first half and should have gone ahead.
But Bohs were too much in the end, with two goals twelve minutes apart. The first came from a well-worked play through the middle, with the ball eventually played to the on-rushing left winger to drive across the goal into the far post. And the second came from a well-earned corner that was headed home by the American Patrick Hickey.
I was sitting among a mixed crowd. Fans like me, who were just in town in search of a groundhopping adventure. Locals looking for a good time. And some older folks out for a little bit of nostalgia. A group of four older men, possibly my father’s age, spoke amongst themselves about the club and reminisced about going to matches when they were younger. Two Germans, friends, I presume, who sat behind me, didn’t stop talking about anything but the match itself.
I saw a number of families. The sort of thing I haven’t seen as much of in Poland or elsewhere, for that matter.
The Fear of Activations
And the commercialization, or as folks in the industry call it, the activation, just wasn’t there either. Which I was okay with.
A game with too much corporatist bullshit is an empty shell of itself, soulless in the best of light and nearing putrefaction in the worst.
These folks, though, understand the meaning of being a club looking to both build a brand running on a progressive ethos and make a product that builds a community around that identity. The sort of red meat of fandom that clubs looking solely at the bottom line miss.
It’s a problem that I see at most MLS clubs now, especially DC United. One that was built around the identity and culture that made DC. Immigration. Multicultural. Multiconfessional. But it’s now an empty shell of its former self, with the front office chasing empty activations and avoiding the most basic of relationship maintenance that’s required to keep fans coming back, even when on-field performance isn’t great.
The bottom line is, Bohs have sorted it. But they do have a hurdle to climb. When they build the new ground, they risk sterilizing the very thing that made them what they are. If any club can sort it, however, it is likely the Phibsborough-based club.
Have you ever visited a ground that felt like it still had its soul intact, or are your local clubs falling victim to the "empty activations" of modern football?
Let me know your favorite historic grounds in the comments below!
Until next time,
Enjoyed this piece. Up the Bohs.
Great piece and what a great club Bohs sounds like. I've never been to a match in the Republic of Ireland, but I did once see a Europa League qualifying match between St Patrick's and Karpaty Lviv in Ukraine (Karpaty actually beat Galatasaray that seasons in the playoff and got to the group stages)
My mother's from Belfast and over the years, I've been to dozens of matches up there. Directly across the street from my grandmother's house was Dundela FC, a 2nd vision side where the goalkeeper is the local butcher and the centre-half is an electrician. I'd often go to the members only bar after matches to chat to locals, my uncle was a member.
But my true local team that I've long supported is Glentoran, and their ground, The Oval, overlooks the harbour where the Titanic was built and the Harland & Wolff cranes that built it are still there. Stunning views, crumbling old ground with terraces still. I saw them play in Ukraine as well, another early round qualifying match against Vorskla Poltava, who knocked them out.