Bohemian F.C. Thread |
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oldbilly
Ray Houghton Joined: 30 Sep 2016 Status: Offline Points: 3251 |
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[QUOTE=BohsinMunich]
OB I admire your excellent callout on the score prediction. Well done [/QUOTEStrictly mid table BiM, more wrong than right!
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sledgehammer
Liam Brady Joined: 29 Jun 2009 Location: Ireland Status: Offline Points: 1780 |
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That was some game and result last night.
Get every single one of those lads signed up as soon as possible. Leahy, Kelly and Stokes on the longest deals they ll sign. All 3 will be back in England soon. Bucko was immense last night great to see him in form
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Up there for thinking. Down there for dancing
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David McWilliams
Kevin Kilbane Joined: 27 Jun 2011 Status: Offline Points: 456 |
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We have Supple and Dinny signed up for next season. Last year, even a bit earlier than this, we signed O'Hora, Sudzer and Brennan on two year deals. I really hope soon we hear news of Leahy, Stokes, Buckley, Lunney, Wardy etc getting ones too. Smashing players and they deserve it.
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BohsinMunich
Ray Houghton Joined: 26 Oct 2011 Status: Offline Points: 3326 |
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D69 Back home for the Irish games so visit to Dalyer will be a delight
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thebronze14
Jack Charlton Derry City Til I Die Joined: 22 Feb 2011 Location: Dublin/Donegal Status: Offline Points: 7170 |
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I'll try fit both in
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Drumcondra 69er
Jack Charlton Joined: 07 Oct 2009 Location: Ireland Status: Offline Points: 7122 |
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Lovely, see you in Dalymount .
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OohAah...
Ray Houghton Joined: 09 Apr 2011 Location: Ireland Status: Offline Points: 3373 |
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great result alright. They may have fecked it your alright but we were playing football and were putting them under pressure. We are now getting the results that we have been threatening to all seasoon and in style.
Kelly has been a class apart since his debut.
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oldbilly
Ray Houghton Joined: 30 Sep 2016 Status: Offline Points: 3251 |
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well whaddya know, Bohs u15s have actually beaten the mightiest most talented best coached(hi duffer) hugely successful project superstars. f**k me.
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BohsinMunich
Ray Houghton Joined: 26 Oct 2011 Status: Offline Points: 3326 |
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Sutton Utd lost 0 4 at home to Borehamwood.. thanks to the irn bru cup for the interest
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smart man
500 Club la la la Not so....... Joined: 12 Aug 2011 Status: Offline Points: 657 |
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has a date been set for the bohs v Sutton game yet.?
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alive and kicking
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the_walls
Jack Charlton 6 in a row, alive alive oh.. Joined: 13 Feb 2009 Location: Walkinstown Status: Offline Points: 5182 |
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October 13th, same as Ireland v Denmark. Bohs match at 3, Ireland game at 7:45.
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smart man
500 Club la la la Not so....... Joined: 12 Aug 2011 Status: Offline Points: 657 |
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cheers. Might take it in before the international.
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alive and kicking
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OohAah...
Ray Houghton Joined: 09 Apr 2011 Location: Ireland Status: Offline Points: 3373 |
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big match tonight. Would love to have made it up.
BBC Radio Foyle are covering it. Available on the web(hopefully they dont cut live commentary) and free sat.
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9fingers
Paul McGrath Ballymun Resident #MONKEANO Joined: 30 Jan 2010 Status: Offline Points: 16141 |
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MC Hammered
Jack Charlton Joined: 05 Oct 2011 Status: Offline Points: 6870 |
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That's article is only open to subscribers. Can you copy and paste it please?
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El Puto Amo
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OohAah...
Ray Houghton Joined: 09 Apr 2011 Location: Ireland Status: Offline Points: 3373 |
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The Bohemians revival: ‘We’re like a GAA club, except we play soccer - that’s no bad thing’Bohemians are rising from the ashes, but they remain as determined as ever to maintain their community ethos It reads more like a morality tale than a football story, a chronicle of excess, then redemption. In many ways Bohemians were a metaphor for the Celtic Tiger, living through what seemed like a golden time, winning leagues and cups, travelling across Europe for five seasons in a row. Yet while everything appeared perfect, it wasn’t. The club, like so many others in the League of Ireland before them, were living beyond their means, caught up in a complicated property sale, €7million in debt by the time the fantasies stopped and reality bit. They were nearing their darkest hour when they saw the light, their board voting to slash their annual wage bill from €1million to €140,000. In so doing, their successful manager was lost, as was the entire first team and hopes of winning anything significant. Or so we thought. “What is success?” Dan Lambert, a member of the current board, asks. “Is it measured by trophies when you can’t afford to pay for the team winning those cups? Or is it improving the club and passing it on to the next generation in a better state than we found it? “When we ran into severe financial trouble, we had to ask what Bohemians was all about. When you are spending a lot of money, people get a sense of entitlement, and think the team has to win, week after week after week. In those years, whenever the team drew or lost, people went home unhappy. “Now, our attitude is to make ourselves relevant to the area and the community, to insulate ourselves from results, to make people come here because they love the club and not just because they want to see a team win.” Nice words, and some would say overly idealistic ones, too. Yet as Lambert offered his persuasive reasons why old-fashioned attitudes are the future, the clang-clang-clang of a metal container could be heard being rolled down the tunnel by a couple of volunteers, who had spent the remainder of their Friday evening washing and drying the first-team kit in the club’s washroom. “Our board of management is made up of guys like that [volunteers],” Lambert said. “Members own the club. It’s theirs not some investment bankers or some benefactors. “For about 50 of us, Bohemians is like a second job and for another 100 or so, it’s something they put a lot of time and money into. People love the club because the club stands against a lot of what modern football has become. We are like a GAA club in terms of our organisation, except we play soccer. And that is not a bad thing.” In fact, it helps. Had the sale of Dalymount Park gone through, the ground would have become just another shopping centre, or row of houses. Over a century of tradition would have disappeared and a community would have been deprived of the place that brings them together. There would not have been the drive to invest time into homeless charities or to work with gardaí to help vulnerable children steer a path away from criminality. Their work with prisoners in Mountjoy, asylum seekers, with an amputee team, the St Vincent de Paul, Special Olympics teams, just would not have happened. “What we are doing isn’t marketing,” Lambert says, “it is happening because it is the right thing to do and we want to make ourselves distinct. We don’t just want to be one-dimensional club obsessed solely with winning. There’s more to us than that.” Lately, though, they have been winning. Seven wins on the trot, including a thrilling 4-2 defeat of champions Cork City last Friday, have lifted them to sixth in the table, as well as bringing them to this evening’s FAI Cup quarter-final against Derry City. Tellingly, the board has forked out on an overnight stay in advance of the match, professionalising their approach. “Well, to be fair, we’re professional in everything we do,” Keith Long, their manager, said. “We’re full-time in attitude and in terms of the hours we put into it. It just so happens we have day jobs as well.” It is something that Long would like to change. This is his fourth year in charge, and he has grown from the aspirational figure whose only previous managerial experience was with Athlone Town. Year after year, he has defied the odds, building and then rebuilding, the habitual loss of key players to bigger-spending clubs becoming a source of frustration. “I don’t just want to become a recruitment officer for someone else,” Long said. “Nor do I want this to sound like poor-me. But there will come a point where I’d love to manage this club in a full-time capacity because I believe my skill sets will make us better. We don’t live in a football bubble at Bohemians, we live in a real world. Players need encouragement, an arm around the shoulder, need talking to, and when you do that and you see them grow as players and people, it’s an unbelievable feeling. And it ties in with the overall ethos. “Bohemians is a special club, with a rich tradition and history. They fell on lean times but I have no doubt we will rise again because the custodians of the club are good people, hard workers. The people who come here do so because they want to see their club do well, because it’s a bit of an event; they get to watch good football.” The frustration is that they would be watching even better football if the stars they brought through their system had hung around. But in football, money talks and players walk. Since 2012, more than a dozen first-teamers have been headhunted; Fuad Sule, Warren O’Hora and Izzy Akinade leaving last year, Dylan Watts this term. Chris Forrester, an earlier graduate from their underage structure, is at Aberdeen now, Kevin Feely at Kildare GAA, after a stint with Charlton Athletic. “We like the tag of being the underdog but there does become a time when you want to challenge,” Long said. “Of course I know you can’t put the health of the club at risk. You have to live within your means. We don’t have a benefactor but there are lots of Foreign Direct Investment companies with CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) funding out there, who would love to identify with a club like this — a club that has worked hard to develop its culture and value system.” In an earlier era, when the culture was different, the Bohemians board had a reputation for being trigger-happy, sacking Roddy Collins and Stephen Kenny shortly after they had each won a league title. Pertinently, Long mentions how football is a fickle business, yet the fact the board looked at the bigger picture when the team was struggling for results earlier this season is indicative of their new ethos. “The thing we have tried to communicate to our members is that the league, as a whole, is operating in a false market,” Lambert said. “There is money being put into other clubs by benefactors. We can never operate in that marketplace again. We have no fixed assets, therefore if we were to run into financial difficulty now, the club’s existence would be at stake and no one would be willing to do that. “What you get in Bohs — indeed the League of Ireland — is something real. Look at the Premier League, and you get the total sterilisation of the football experience where you go into a ground and are told exactly where to sit. There is no sense of excitement.” It was present at Dalymount last Friday, the flares and the songs, the banners and the graffiti, the fans moving joyously from the stand to the bars. It isn’t possible to bottle and sell a supporter’s passion. If it were, this club’s financial worries would be instantly solved. |
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OohAah...
Ray Houghton Joined: 09 Apr 2011 Location: Ireland Status: Offline Points: 3373 |
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shocking cut n paste jobs , sorry, but you can subscribe for free and get 5 free articles of the times per week or sumtin
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9fingers
Paul McGrath Ballymun Resident #MONKEANO Joined: 30 Jan 2010 Status: Offline Points: 16141 |
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1 up @ HT
Shame I can’t find a link. Anyone know the dates of potential Cork game if we get by tonight?
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