‘Dublin players are there, Roddy Doyle goes games. to It’s a thing grown’ that has

“If you told somebody you were a Bohs fan in the 1990s, they’d look at you weirdly and ask what team you really supported, meaning an English club,” Ó Riordáin says. “Now they’re sold out, there’s a fashionableness about it. It’s who’s who, the Dublin players are there, Roddy Doyle goes to games. It’s just a thing that has grown.”

Dan Lambert points to a recent survey the club undertook where 32pc of the club’s members rated the club’s values as an extremely important reason why they became a member.

Even in the notoriously factionalised world of Irish football, Bohemian’s achievements are often praised. It is a club that has married social values to a commercial reality extremely successfully. The commercial deals it signs are not dependent on a team’s success but are linked to the values it represents, making those partnerships more sustainable.

“What Bohs have tapped into is their sense of history from Dalymount Park,” Ó Riordáin, who also runs a walking tour of Irish football history with Gary Cooke, says. “It’s the home of Irish football, the great occasions that took place there, the concerts that took place there. Tapping into political campaigns. Making brave decisions, taking risks — refugees welcome — that was a risk. It taps into a deeper culture that Bohs have.”

How did this happen? As much by necessity as design. Lambert meets me in the Bohemian FC office in Phibsboro Tower. As there is a game later this evening, many of the staff won’t be in until later in the day. Lambert, who also manages Kneecap and co-owns a local cafe, guides me into the boardroom. The Bohs Community Strategy 2023-2027 is on the table. The cover makes clear the club’s objectives. Bohemian FC — Changes Lives and Communities.

“What you have here is one of the oldest fan-owned clubs in the world. It was set up in 1890 and played at the same location since 1901,” he says. “We’re a small league in a small country, but Bohs is pretty special. I’d hazard a guess that there is no club in the world that is fan-owned and has played 134 years in a row who’ve played in the top division. I might be wrong but they’d have to be Scottish or English, and there aren’t any.”

The club remained member-only through its history but bounced along like all other League of Ireland clubs on the turbulent sea that is Irish football. That it was member-owned made it different, as did its amateur status, which only changed in 1970. These two factors were important when its history and its place in the community became important.

For a period of six or seven years from 2004 to 2011, Lambert says the club behaved “like a mini Premier League club”. They weren’t alone but the consequences could have been ruinous. “In that period, we lose nine million quid and we nearly lose Dalymount Park,” he says. In the year after 2011, the club cut its budget by 93pc and, in 2012, Lambert found himself on the board.

Lambert thinks he might have been one of the youngest-ever board members, but that wasn’t because of any particular talents. “Nobody wanted to go on the board, the club was f**ked.”

The club had enjoyed a hugely successful period on the field but it had broken them financially. ‘What are we selling?’ they asked in 2012.

“We’ve spent the last 10 years losing a fortune, selling a team that’s going to win a lot of trophies. Now we don’t have that, but what do we have?

“We actually had really good values, really good inherent values in the football club. Even when the company nearly went out of business in 2013, the members rejected the idea of a private model. We said, as a board, ‘Should we look for a buyer?’ People didn’t want to do that. They wanted to keep the club. And then we began to look at the values. It had lots of strong values, lots of really active volunteers and people who care about what happens in the local area and replicated nationally, internationally.”

If this sounds familiar to you, then Ó Riordáin identifies why. “What Bohs have decided to do and which football clubs aren’t good at and which football in Ireland isn’t good at — and I can speak to this as someone who runs a football history tour — is speaking about history and speaking about heritage,” he says. “The GAA are brilliant at it. The names of GAA clubs capture that. Bohs have tapped into a sense of an identity that’s linked to Dalymount and linked to their heritage.”

But Bohs have moved beyond the narrow tramlines of what football is supposed to be, even if football at its most profound was always a game rooted in its communities.

“I’ve always been into football,” says poet John Cummins, who is now the poet in residence at Bohemian FC. “I grew up in the 1980s in Coolock. There weren’t too many poets knocking about. I was in Ballymun recently and they had a sports and literature week and I went to give a lecture on that. I don’t know if there’s any club with a poet but there are lots of poets into football.”

Cummins has become more comfortable straddling the two worlds. “I hid the fact that I scribbled for a long time, especially in the football world. The dressing room isn’t an environment for poetry.”

Cummins became the poet in residence after talking to Lambert in Bang Bang, the local cafe Lambert co-owns. He was a Bohs fan but this was a chance to give greater meaning to two aspects of his personality that may previously have been in opposition. “If something inspires me to write, I might write a little verse, or sometimes Dan might get in touch to ask. There is a lot there to tap into.”

To the critics, this was more of the stuff for people in Stoneybatter, which would turn off the core. “We’ve got 22 members in Stoneybatter, we’ve 170 in Blanch,” Lambert says. “Our membership growth has been predominantly in working-class areas.” Beyond its traditional areas, Bohs has members in every county in Ireland and it has more than 200 members internationally.

Those who play for the club are energised by the community aspect as well. Rachael Kelly is captain of the women’s team. “It’s hugely important for us. You can see what Bohs does outside of football and it just brings everyone together. It’s massive to be part of that community.

“There’s such a feel-good factor, for us as much as anyone. When you go around to the local schools around Phibsborough, you can see what football and Bohs mean to the kids. People who are really happy to see you, it’s amazing. We had a couple of girls who came into training buzzing because of what it means to the community.”

“It’s one of the pillars for us as a group,” says Ken Kiernan, manager of the women’s team.

The work the club does in the community inspires the players as much as the community. “When the players come and talk to you about the talks they’ve given in schools in Cabra or in Sherriff Street and they show you the pictures or talk about the reaction, it can be quite emotional,” he says. “I know it’s a cliche, but it’s more than a football club.”

The game against Palestine this week encapsulated many elements of how Bohemian FC has made an impact.

“We’ve probably raised millions for migrants in Ireland,” Lambert says. “At the end of 2022, the club started working with a charity in Palestine. At the end of 2023, we had a conversation which ended with the question, ‘What if we could bring a Palestine team over here?’”

Speaking before the match, Kelly said, “It’s a massive event. To be part of a historic day is going to be amazing. I think you’ll see that it’s not just the football community who will come together, it will be everyone who wants to show their support.”

“We’re hugely proud to represent the club with such strong social values in this game,” Kiernan added. “To be able to use football as a tool for good. When the players from Palestine come over, when they see there’s such support for them, that’s really important.”

The importance of the work Bohs has been doing may be growing. The rise in the far right, often in the areas that are the heartland for the club, is an obvious concern. But there has been no pushback, Lambert says.

People’s own experience where they play, work and live with people from all races is often different to the fear provoked online. Bohs has a young fanbase and it hopes that some of the messages spread, even subliminally.

Above Block G in Dalymount, what was an advertising hoarding now has a billboard with a poster saying ‘Love Football-Hate Racism’.

“Block G is where all the young fellas sing,” Lambert says. “When a goal is scored and they go online to pull a picture for their Facebook page, what’s over their head? A really positive message.”

It turns out that, in a world of globalised sports franchises, there is an appetite for something more personal as well, something where people feel they belong.

“They’ve made it very easy to be proud of the club,” Ó Riordáin says. “There’s a sense of pride that international media are interested in the club. Fans from all over the world, when they come to Dublin, they come to a game. They buy this Thin Lizzy jersey or this Bob Marley jersey that they’ve heard of. A lot of the media commentary is positive and about now. It’s not talking about the past but it is rooted in that heritage.”

By understanding the past, Bohemian FC has made the future viable and the present vibrant.