Bohemians FC
AKA: De Bowez. Yes, the standards of literacy are indeed that low in inner city Dublin - and most
of the rest of the country. Have also been labeled "Crisp eating surrender-monkeys".
Where: Dalymount Park. Used to host 60,000 fans, until the rules were changed to rule stacking
people seven high on the terraces illegal. Now cowers behind some rows of terracing, hiding in fear of
the nearby National Bogball and Stickfighting Arena, or Croke Park, as it’s sometimes called.
Personalities: None, which is not unusual for that part of the country. Do, however, watch out for
idiots throwing rocks - they’re pretty good at it, which STIG puts down to lots of practice. Remember
kids, if you put you mind to it, you can achieve just about anything, except for making Paul Doolin’s
head explode. Believe us, we’ve tried. We even gave him Mark Rooney.
History
Bohs are the oldest association football club in Ireland, founded in 1890, in what is generally
considered to be the second greatest mistake ever made in Irish football. The greatest, of course,
is selling Milltown, but we’ll save that for another time. It was founded by a bunch of scumbags
knacker-drinking in the Phoenix Park, who needed to form a club in order to have a reason to be
hanging around, drinking. What better excuse could they have than that they were "watching the
match", a euphemism which survives today?
Initially, they played in red, but a practice of not washing their kit led to the appearance of
dark streaks, which became officially endorsed in 1893. This practice also led to them winning a
number of early games at the Polo Grounds, in the Phoenix Park, by default, as their opponents
couldn’t bring themselves to occupy the same pitch. The goalposts for this early ground (which was
nicknamed "The Nine Acres") were stolen from the Gate Lodge, where a commemorative rock, first thrown
at the windows in 1892, is still to be seen in the gardens. From 1893 Bohemians began to squat on the
site of what is now Croke Park in Jones’s Road, but which had been opened as the rather grandly
titled "City & Suburban Racecourse and General Amusement Grounds" in August of the previous year,
before being kicked out two years later.
They moved to White Hall, a shit-hole still trying to recover from the experience. In 1901, the
club was forced to move again, this time to a vegetable patch. It was felt at the time that the
supporters would feel at home in their new ground: Dalymount Park. They agreed an annual rent of £48,
of which they paid a deposit of £12. To this day, that is the sum total of rent their landlord has
managed to wring out of them. The club remained amateurish until 1969, and is still considered
unprofessional today, despite declaring otherwise for tax purposes.
The club’s first floodlights were borrowed from Arsenal for the purposes of staging a friendly
with them in 1962. Arsenal won 8-3, but are still looking for their floodlights back. In 1975, the
FAI stopped using Dalymount to host internationals after they lost an entire team in a knife-fight
outside of the ground. The club has had successful spells during the nineteen twenties and thirties,
and again from the nineteen seventies onwards. Their most recent league title was 2003, and they won
the FAI Cup in 2002, which hardly counts as history, but we have to put it in to make sure that no Bohs
fans reading this think we’re biased in any way... Ah, who are we kidding, Bohs fans can’t read.
