Bohemian FC is more than a football club

The Avi­va Sta­di­um of Dublin, home to both the Irish rug­by union and foot­ball teams, is not an espe­cial­ly char­ac­ter­ful struc­ture. Sil­ver, shiny, and cor­po­rate-smooth, it bears the name of a Lon­don-based multi­na­tion­al insur­ance com­pa­ny, and, in gen­er­al, rubs uneasi­ly against the warm, half-cut cheer­i­ness of Irish foot­ball fans in full song. But, ear­li­er this year, on a fine Sun­day after­noon of mid-Feb­ru­ary, the Avi­va played host to a spici­er occa­sion than nor­mal. There, for the first time, a League of Ire­land foot­ball match was to be played in front of a record-break­ing num­ber of fans, a tes­ta­ment to the grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of Ireland’s domes­tic league. This was the open­ing week­end of a new sea­son, and a Dublin der­by, too: Bohemi­an FC ver­sus Sham­rock Rovers.

Before kick off, the atmos­phere was bois­ter­ous. Good-humoured ani­mos­i­ty was sprayed from one set of fans to the oth­er, rat­ty ban­ners tak­ing the piss out of the oppo­si­tion were raised, and many colour­ful flags were waved, includ­ing, notably, Pales­tin­ian flags wield­ed by both sets of fans. Flares were lit and chants were roared, and if you closed your eyes tight­ly enough it was pos­si­ble to trick your­self into believ­ing you were at a night-time der­by in Istan­bul, rather than this lazy after­noon in Ireland’s capital.

It was Bohemi­ans – or ​‘Bohs’ as the club is known local­ly – who sur­ren­dered home advan­tage for the occa­sion, swap­ping its north Dublin Daly­mount Sta­di­um of Phib­s­bor­ough for the Avi­va, which stands fur­ther south. But there was a log­ic to the move: there is more inter­est than ever in both the club and the league, and now is the time to cap­i­talise. Daly­mount will be soon rede­vel­oped, mean­ing like­ly from next sea­son, Bohs will become a rov­ing club with­out a fixed home, which will inevitably come with both sport­ing and finan­cial chal­lenges. Play­ing this fix­ture at the Avi­va – that is, sell­ing more match-day tick­ets – may serve them well next year, as finances begin to creak with­out the sta­bil­i­ty of its home ground to count on.

These are rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing exper­i­ments worth play­ing with as Bohs, of all clubs, are in no posi­tion to rely on the pro­tec­tion of a mil­lion­aire own­er over the com­ing years of insta­bil­i­ty. The club is mem­ber-owned, and has oper­at­ed that way since their incep­tion in 1890. One mem­ber, one vote: it can seem a quaint­ly rad­i­cal way to run a foot­ball club in this sport­ing era of pet­rostates and pri­vate equi­ty. Bohs, of course, isn’t the only fan-owned team in the world, nor even the only one in the League of Ire­land. But it does tend to stand out.

Bohemi­ans, true to their very name, are the trendy choice of Irish foot­ball team. It hosts half-time raves, pro­duces the most aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing match day posters around, and on occa­sion, tog out in the bright, bub­blegum pink-and-blue of indie-kid dar­lings Fontaines D.C., who appear on the men’s third kit this sea­son. But vibes alone can drag a club only so far, and much more impor­tant to Bohs’ appeal is the work that it does in the sur­round­ing community.

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Dublin, and the coun­try that bears it, is a land of mount­ing prob­lems. Irish hous­ing costs in 2023 were said to be dou­ble the EU aver­age, leav­ing the coun­try trapped in a long, unend­ing hous­ing cri­sis which has dri­ven large num­bers of peo­ple to home­less­ness and emi­gra­tion, or, in the case of 69% of 25-year-olds, forced them to live at home with their par­ents. Pub­lic infra­struc­ture is, in many areas, under­de­vel­oped, the health­care sys­tem is among the worst per­form­ing in the north­ern hemi­sphere, and foods and ser­vices are among the most expen­sive in the EU, sec­ond only to Den­mark in 2024. The government’s pur­port­ed efforts to decar­bonise have been meek and large­ly inef­fec­tu­al, yet the coun­try is as vul­ner­a­ble as any­where else to cli­mate break­down, as a recent, dev­as­tat­ing storm laid bare, when record-break­ing winds left more than 725,000 homes and busi­ness­es with­out pow­er, with some in rur­al areas wait­ing two long weeks to be reconnected. 

For all the cra­ic the country’s tourism board may promise to over­seas vis­i­tors, nightlife is strug­gling, with more than 2,000 pubs shut­ting down across the coun­try over the last 20 years and Dublin’s active night­clubs dwin­dling from around 100 in the year 2000 to just 23 today. Moods are frayed, and in tune with the rest of Europe, the far-right is agi­tat­ing. It is with­in this prick­ly con­text that Bohs are step­ping for­ward as more than just a foot­ball club. Be that through arrang­ing ambi­tious, logis­ti­cal­ly com­plex social projects at large scale, or, at a sim­pler lev­el, through offer­ing some pre­cious space with­in which a com­mu­ni­ty might breathe.

“We’ve lost a lot in Dublin,” Daniel Lam­bert, Bohs’ chief oper­at­ing offi­cer, tells me. ​“Social spaces, afford­abil­i­ty, night­clubs – so much of that has been tak­en away. They’re all gone, because that land is being used to max­imise income for glob­al cap­i­tal. But Daly­mount is a com­mu­ni­ty-owned space. It allows for social con­nec­tions, but also the abil­i­ty to go there for 15 or 20 quid, have a night out, [lis­ten to] music – all these things that don’t real­ly exist else­where anymore.”

In con­tem­po­rary Dublin, pro­vid­ing a space for peo­ple to meet is a pre­cious, increas­ing­ly rare thing. But Bohs’ work is far more expan­sive. Take their annu­al Christ­mas gift ini­tia­tive, in which the club, some part­ners, and a net­work of vol­un­teers pro­vide a wrapped Christ­mas present to each child trapped in Ireland’s sys­tem of direct pro­vi­sion. Direct pro­vi­sion is, accord­ing to Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al, a ​“human rights scan­dal” designed to pro­vide hous­ing and basic neces­si­ties for asy­lum seek­ers who have come to Ire­land seek­ing inter­na­tion­al pro­tec­tion. But in prac­tice, it forces them to live in cramped con­di­tions, with low qual­i­ty food, and poten­tial­ly leaves them lan­guish­ing in the sys­tem for years. By pro­vid­ing these chil­dren with at least a gift each Christ­mas, the club offers gen­eros­i­ty that the state does not.

Anti-racism is a core tenet of Bohemi­ans’ ethos, with club mem­bers run­ning work­shops in pri­ma­ry schools about migra­tion, aimed at chal­leng­ing anti-immi­grant sen­ti­ments and to pro­mote under­stand­ing among kids for those who come to Ire­land. ​“I am a firm believ­er,” says Aib­hínn Con­way, the club’s head of com­mu­ni­ty, ​“that if you can get into a school, the pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less. Schools are the focal point of most com­mu­ni­ties. It’s where every­body comes together.”

Pales­tine also fea­tures promi­nent­ly in Bohs’ activism – indeed, serv­ing as the club’s chief oper­at­ing offi­cer is not Lambert’s only job. He’s also the man­ag­er of hip-hop group Kneecap, who, over the last few weeks, have found them­selves trapped in the mid­dle of one of Britain’s peri­od­ic moral out­rages, which was sparked by the band’s loud show of sup­port for the Pales­tini­ans at Coachel­la. Lam­bert has been forced to appear in Irish media, defend­ing his band and point­ing out: ​“Chil­dren are starv­ing to death, and we’re spend­ing six or sev­en days talk­ing about Kneecap. We spent less than a day talk­ing about 15 exe­cut­ed medics.”

Lam­bert has long spo­ken out in sup­port of Pales­tine, and his club has been known to do the same. Bohs has pre­vi­ous­ly raised mon­ey to help chil­dren access sports in the West Bank, while last May it arranged a sol­i­dar­i­ty match with the Pales­tin­ian women’s team, which was played short­ly after Israel’s offen­sive against the city of Rafah began, forc­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple to flee their homes. The club’s open sup­port for Pales­tine is entire­ly in line with pub­lic opin­ion through­out Ire­land – Sham­rock Rovers fans, too, were wav­ing Pales­tine flags at that match in the Avi­va – but, with­in the glob­al foot­balling ecosys­tem, Bohs’ advo­ca­cy is rare.

“It’s absolute­ly ludi­crous that Israel isn’t iso­lat­ed and sanc­tioned by the rest of the world in foot­ball,” says Lam­bert. ​“It’s no sur­prise that organ­i­sa­tions like UEFA and FIFA are doing noth­ing, but the hypocrisy – the fact Russia’s banned and Israel isn’t – is just outrageous.”

Bohemi­ans, unbri­dled by the need to gen­er­ate prof­its for share­hold­ers, is in a posi­tion to take up posi­tions oth­er clubs wouldn’t. In 2021, the club took the unprece­dent­ed step of appoint­ing a ded­i­cat­ed cli­mate jus­tice offi­cer. ​“I know it’s weird – a foot­ball club doing this” the man him­self, Seán McCabe, tells me. ​“But a foot­ball club is a man­i­fes­ta­tion of com­mu­ni­ty. A lot of peo­ple work­ing on the cli­mate are try­ing to insti­gate new insti­tu­tions almost to repli­cate what foot­ball is already doing, or what trade unions are already doing, or what the church is already doing. Some­times we don’t need new insti­tu­tions. We need to go to the insti­tu­tions that already exist and meet peo­ple where they’re at.”

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McCabe, a man with years of expe­ri­ence work­ing on cli­mate pol­i­cy, under­stands that a whiff of elit­ism is often asso­ci­at­ed with envi­ron­men­tal­ism, but he is keen to impress that the club does not make ordi­nary people’s lives hard­er in the process. It’s about remain­ing ​“ground­ed in the mate­r­i­al needs of peo­ple” and launch­ing ini­tia­tives that serve more than a green agen­da alone. The club plans to estab­lish a ​“bike library” and a wider ​“library of things”, where locals will be able to access spe­cif­ic items that are used only on occa­sion, which are ​“green”, but will also serve people’s imme­di­ate, day-to-day needs. Their asso­ci­a­tion with a near­by organ­ic farm means club mem­bers can access local­ly grown fruit and veg for a rea­son­able price. That, too, is ​“green” but also con­fronts the cost-of-liv­ing crisis. 

Ideas to retro­fit club mem­bers’ hous­es to make them more ener­gy effi­cient while keep­ing bills down are also being con­sid­ered. And there is a plan to estab­lish a com­mu­ni­ty cli­mate coop­er­a­tive, based around prin­ci­ples devel­oped by the Mon­drag­on Cor­po­ra­tion in the Basque Coun­try – the world’s biggest co-op and one of Spain’s biggest cor­po­ra­tions full stop. About 70,000 peo­ple work for Mon­drag­on, which is con­sti­tut­ed by a net­work of autonomous co-ops where all mem­ber-work­ers are enti­tled to an equal say in how the busi­ness oper­ates, as well as a share of the prof­its gen­er­at­ed. The mod­el rather aligns with a mem­ber-owned sports club, and, in recog­ni­tion of that, Bohs have sent del­e­ga­tions to vis­it Mon­drag­on for inspi­ra­tion, as they look ahead to the launch of their own cli­mate co-op lat­er this year.

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“We believe our cul­tur­al foot­print is more impor­tant than our car­bon foot­print,” says McCabe. ​“That’s not to dimin­ish the impor­tance of reduc­ing our own emis­sions – we are try­ing to do that. But that’s only a frac­tion of what we can achieve. The real role foot­ball clubs and insti­tu­tions like ours can play in the cli­mate cri­sis is to bring the sense of belong­ing that foot­ball cul­ture pro­vides, and to help peo­ple see them­selves in the future. And, then, to organ­ise and work towards that future.”

Wear­ing their pol­i­tics on their rain­bow-coloured sleeves is impor­tant to Bohs, but that invari­ably rubs some peo­ple up the wrong way. Rival fans and online com­men­ta­tors have decried the club’s pro­nounce­ments as ​“virtue sig­nalling”, while their part­ner­ships with big cor­po­ra­tions like Guin­ness, not to men­tion their deci­sion to host the Sham­rock Rovers match in the Avi­va, have drawn calls of hypocrisy. If the club was seri­ous about its pro­gres­sivism, the log­ic goes, it wouldn’t engage with cap­i­tal­ist enter­pris­es, but, as Lam­bert sug­gests, Bohs need to bal­ance their ideals with the real­i­ties of func­tion­ing as a suc­cess­ful sport­ing club. ​“Our com­peti­tors can out­bid us on play­ers,” he says. ​“They can finance more. They can make loss­es. We can’t.”

Lam­bert insists that, despite their cor­po­rate part­ners, Bohs have not felt pres­sured to act any dif­fer­ent­ly, mean­ing they can under­take their com­mu­ni­ty work freely. There is a mes­sage posi­tioned above one of the stands at Daly­mount Park, which was once sold to adver­tis­ers, but now reads: ​“Love foot­ball, hate racism” with a raised fist at its cen­tre. ​“We used to sell that space,” Lam­bert explains. ​“But now, rather than a com­pa­ny, there’s an anti-racism mes­sage that may shape people’s views. It’s not a lec­ture. It just exists. And, on the side of the pitch now is a large mur­al with the Pales­tin­ian flag and the Irish flag. That’s in the sta­di­um – 4,000 peo­ple see­ing that every Fri­day. That might chal­lenge some things that peo­ple are hear­ing in anoth­er part of their day or week.”

And it’s these sup­port­ers who form the true foun­da­tions of the club, and its val­ues. Being ful­ly fan-owned nat­u­ral­ly requires the need to serve its mem­bers, which in turn means embody­ing their val­ues, while empow­er­ing them to make deci­sions about how their club is run. As impor­tant as results on the pitch are, Bohs can’t just stick to the football.

“The suc­cess of the foot­ball club,” Lam­bert says, ​“direct­ly rests on thou­sands of peo­ple will­ing to become a mem­ber, give time, buy shirts, all that stuff. If we’re to be suc­cess­ful, there has to be some­thing that moti­vates and con­nects with these peo­ple beyond results on the pitch. If we can cham­pi­on issues that are faced by the peo­ple of Dublin or Ire­land, or issues that are close to their hearts that may be fur­ther afield, like in Pales­tine, then ulti­mate­ly that’s con­nect­ing with peo­ple in a real way.”

That open­ing match of the sea­son, against Sham­rock Rovers in the Avi­va, end­ed with a 1 – 0 vic­to­ry to Bohs. It had not been a clas­sic. Once the flares before kick-off had dis­si­pat­ed, the game set­tled into a gen­er­al­ly flat, start-of-sea­son spec­ta­cle, defined by rust and still-stiff joints. But com­pared to watch­ing the Pre­mier League on TV, where waxed mil­lion­aires with nice hair and stone-carved bel­lies pass side­ways around the back, this League of Ire­land match, in which good-but-not-elite ath­letes twat­ted the ball long and attacked down the wings, was mag­i­cal. It was a fun day, under­pinned by the warm hum of know­ing the home team on the pitch actu­al­ly speaks to the val­ues of its fans. Win or lose – and the Bohs men’s team, fol­low­ing this game, would indeed go on a run of ter­ri­ble form – there is more to this thing than three points and mak­ing money.

“The club gets hit with [calls to] ​‘focus on the foot­ball’, this kind of stuff,” Con­way tells me. ​“If you’re some­body who gets their fix out of a result on a Fri­day night, then hap­py days. But this club can impact many more peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty who’ll nev­er step foot into Daly­mount on a Fri­day night. And that can be their three points, you know?”

Tier­nan Can­non is an Irish free­lance writer. Fol­low him on X.

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