Filed under: Home Games
As much as I tried to resist a Rhyl pun, I just couldn’t…
Apart from the Big Club of course, there were no real ‘glamour’ teams in the hat for the Intertoto Cup draw back in April. I’d desperately hoped to make my first ever Bohs European trip after missing out on Ghent three years ago, and so was hoping for a destination which wouldn’t hit me too hard in the pocket. The draw? Rhyl FC of Wales, one hour and forty-nine minutes if we’re being precise on the fast ferry to Holyhead, Rhyl itself being a further hour or so from there. A European trip faster to get to than an away trip to Cork, Cobh, Galway, Sligo, Finn Harps or Derry – perfect. We were drawn to play the first leg at home, and even better it was a Saturday evening kick-off, I hate having work the day after a match. I left work in Cabra at three and headed home, only to read on the message board that, due to UEFA regulations, the bars were to be closed both before the match and at half-time. An emergency plan had to be put into place! I rang my mate Jayo who was heading too and got him to grab a couple of naggins on the way to pass the bus journey. We mixed them in my house and off we went. As is the norm now, I put a scorecast on in BoyleSports, Killian Brennan and a 3-0 Bohs victory I chose this time, probably feeling a bit cocky after almost winning an absolute fortune on a Euro 2008 scorecast (damn you Czechs!).
Bohs were horrible to watch in the first half. Rhyl, 7/1 shots to win the match, had a real hunger about them and w couldn’t string two passes together. Only a few minutes in, Rhyl failed to take the lead from a sitter, a one-on-one which Brian Murphy made two heroic saves from. Rhyl weren’t just here for the holiday. Bohs were asleep, and Rhyl snatched an away goal mid-way through the first half, Ken Oman turning a low cross from the right into his own net. The 150 or so Welsh travelling army behind the goal were in dreamland, the Jodi was stunned. Bohs’ only decent chance of the half fell to Joxer Kelly, who somehow managed to miss a sitter from inside the six-yard box. Seemed like it could just be one of those nights. The boos rung out on the half-time whistle. There was no bar to head to for us to moan over a pint about what we’d just witnessed.
The second half seemed to take forever to come around, and when it did, the heavy rain stopped and instead it rained goals. Less than ten minutes in, Jason Byrne’s low free kicked skidded past Rhyl’s ‘keeper Lee Kendall’s right and into the net. It seemed to take Kendall ages to react. One-all, and things were looking up a bit. Owen Heary put Bohs ahead soon after when he headed in a Neale Fenn corner. Player of the month award-winner Killan Brennan was brought down by Kendall and not for the first time coolly slotted home from the penalty spot. This was a bit more like it from Bohs, and I’d love to have known what had been said in the dressing room at half-time. Brennan headed an Owen Heary cross into the ground from twelve yards and Neale Fenn finished off the job, heading over Kendall and in. Glen Crowe finished off the rout when, from a one-on-one, he slotted the ball neatly into the bottom left corner. It turned out io be a training match after all. Kendall wasn’t best pleased about the taunting by the Bohs crowd over some weight issues and so being a bold boy, he slipped his glove off on a couple of occasions to return some one-fingered gestures, probably not realising there’ll be six hundred or so of us within a couple of metres of his goal in Belle Vue this weekend.
So, five clear at the top of the league, in both domestic cups, through to the second round of European competition, and a booze cruise to Wales this weekend, we’re loving every moment of this…
Filed under: Away Games | Tags: Bohemians, Bohs, Eircom League, Junkies, Richmond Park, ST Pats
How satisfying it was in the run-up to last Tuesday’s match against the Junkies to actually hear the words “Bohemians” and “top of the table clash” used in the same sentence for the first time in a long time.
Eight hours had to be spent in work first trying to look busy before the trip south to Inchicore. All morning the rain bucketed down and although optimistic about our chances the previous few days, it felt like it could be one of those days when we’d lose and get drenched in Pats’ roofless stand, and anything else that could go wrong, would. For this trip I was to be accompanied by two of my fellow Navan Bohs comrades, along with Frankie and a possible new addition to the Bohs Meath battalion, 11 year-old Aidan. Out of work at three and onto a bus into town, where strangely enough the first port of call was Penneys to buy socks! I was soaked and must’ve been looking forward to the match so much I’d forgotten to pack a change of socks for after work. Like a big loner and having a couple of hours to spare I headed for a pint and a read of the Daily Mail, which dedicated a whole one third of a page or so to the League of Ireland. They also predicted a Pats win.
The weather changed for the good and so did my feeling about the match. After coming away from the Drogheda and Scum away games with three points, and our magnificent away form in general, I fancied our chances to repeat the feat. As pointed out in the Cork report, the Setanta cameras seem to be a good omen for us too. At quarter to seven Frankie and Aidan arrived followed closely by Jayo and David. As is the norm now, a trip had to be paid to BoyleSports for a flutter, this time for a more sensible bet than the previous week’s six-match accumulator. Frankie went for Crowe to bag the opener, and also a half-time/full-time forecast of the draw/Bohs. I slapped a fiver on Killian Brennan to score first at a tasty 11/1. After about twenty “As Seirbhís” buses passed us on Doyle’s Corner we hopped onto a 19. We arrived in about five minutes late and since the away end was so packed, three of us spent the first half in the company of our good friend, the casuals. The whole ground was pretty full looking, the way it should be.
Looking back at the Cork blog entry, the match report does seem far too detailed, so less of the waffle here! There isn’t really a lot to say in fairness, especially about the first half. Jamie Harris went within inches of netting near the end of the first half with a header for Keith Fahey’s free kick on the left. Half-time arrived and off went the lads to take a whizz and grab some quarter pounders. Six minutes into the second half, and Jason Byrne played a neat through ball into the path of Glen Crowe who, from where we were stood, looked miles offside. The linesman kept his flag down, Crowe was bearing down on Barry Murphy’s goal. Neale Fenn raced through the middle and it seemed Crowe would hold it up and play it to him. Instead he played a simple ball to the back post, where Killian Brennan had the easiest of tap-ins. The stand felt like it was going to collapse such was the eruption and pile-up of bodies. My buddy held me up on the back of a seat and the view of the Bohs crowd jumping around like lunatics was fantastic, what a feeling. As I got down I remembered my bet, nice one Killian! Neale Fenn, playing a stormer, almost added a second when he was one-on-one with the keeper but he failed with two attempts. Funniest moment of the night was when the Bohs fans shouted “You-fat-b*****d” at a Barry Ryan goal-kick, only for our very own Block-G regular Barry to follow up with “You-fat-b*****d…Larry”. The final whistle was greeted once again with chants of “We’re goin’ to win the league”, something we haven’t been able to sing for about five years now. Myself and Frankie both had winning bets. An almost perfect night (I say almost, as when we got back to Navan we couldn’t find a boozer still serving for a celebratory pint!)
As we waited for our bus, which was labeled “Special” funnily enough, to pull out we heard a bit of a racket down below. Some coppers boarded a bus full of Pats fans. A few lads, and even a couple of girls, made a few slit-throat and hand gestures up to us, simply responded to with a grin from ear to ear, a clenched fist and a few kisses of the crest.
Altogether now, WE’RE GOIN’ TO WIN THE LEAGUE!!
Filed under: Home Games | Tags: Bohemian Fc, Eircom League, Killian Brennan, ST Pats
After last weeks escapades against St Pats the Bohs faithful are in very high spirits. We are top of the league for the first time in five years, Why shouldn’t we be? Last Tuesday’s game was the only game I can remember as a Bohs fan chanting “we are top of the league”. It was a special moment.
As I’m sure Gary will have a post up soon enough about Tuesday’s game I wont go into to much detail.
As a favor I brought an 11 year old boy to the match on Tuesday but in truth it was also a bid to seduce him into supporting Bohs and eircom league football. I think it might have worked. On the long trip down to Inchicore he was full of stories about the champions league final, how Manchester United were brillant this season and how great Ronaldo is etc etc but on the way home the only think he could talk about was “when is the next match?” “when can I go to Dalymount?” he told me he thought it was ‘class’ and he cant wait to go again. I have also heard stories of him going around his house singing Bohs songs and nagging his mam into letting him go to another game. Job done it seems.
As i type this it is 2.34 AM (I should really be asleep) and Bohs are 3 points clear at the top of the table. Tonights 3-0 victory against an in form Sligo Rovers team and St Pats drawing 2-2 away to Galway means we now have some breathing room at the top. Lets hope it stays like that.
Before I left for the match I texted Gary and asked him to place a couple of bets for me because he was already in Dublin apparently enjoying the sun while writing (yes writing) out his latest blog entry. These bets are starting to turn into a weekly obsession and this blog might as well turn into a gambling blog. After my success on Tuesday in predicting Bohs would be level at half time and would then go onto win the match I thought it would be rude not to have a flutter this week. I made two bets, Neale Fenn to score fist and Pats and Galway to draw 0-0. Of course Neale dually obliged and did in fact score an excellent goal to earn me some more money but the Pats and Galway ended in a 2-2 draw and not a 0-0 draw as I had hoped. It was time to kiss that 3 euro goodbye.
The new fans favourite Killian Brennan then added to more goals in the second half to bring his season tally up to 7. A remarkable achievement for a left-winger, who comes face to face with his brother and old team Drogheda Town in next weeks FAI cup 3rd round.
So a 3-0 win and an important 3 points going into the summer break hopefully by the next time I get around to posting on this blog we will have beat non-league Drogheda Town and will still be sitting pretty at the top of the table.
Filed under: Home Games | Tags: Bohemian Fc, Dalymount park, DunshaughlinBohs, Eircom League, Galway United, Liam Burns, Neale Fenn
Photo taken by NavanBohs
It felt pretty good to be a Bohs fan this week. We were only two points off St Pats at the top of the table and had just beaten Cork City last week with a dramatic 87th minute winner. But after last weeks enthralling affair against Cork it was back to the grindstone this week as Bohs took on bottom of the table Galway United. I was looking forward to this one because I had a gut feeling Sligo would take points off Pats and we would beat Galway, so therefore we would be top of the league. Of course this was wrong. Well sort of, Bohs did beat Galway but thanks to an 82nd minute equalizer Pats remain at the summit of the table going into next weeks top of the table clash against Bohs which has no been dubbed “super Tuesday”.
I met Gary on the bus this week and congratulated him on his extra long post last week which he claims only took him an hour! As we got off the us we decided to make our way to the bookies for a change, to place a few bets before the game. Not being much of a gambler both of my bets didn’t work out as planned. Bohs did not beat Galway 1-0 and Sligo were not leading at half time.
Back to the match and in truth it was a pretty dull encounter with the highlight of the first half being Bohs new mascot who was rumored to be a certain regular poster on the Bohs message board. If this is true or not I cannot say although he did respond to “LukeO give us wave”
Neale Fenn put bohs one up going into the break with the crowd chanting the usual chant of
“strippers and whores when Neale Fenn scores”
Bohs we were playing very poorly and to be honest Galway didn’t deserve to be a goal down.
As the second half kicked off it was still as scrappy as the first with some bad news for Bohs fans as Conor Powell was taken off injured and replaced by Harpl Singh. Glen Crowe also came on in place of Jason Byrne on 66 minutes. Disaster stuck when Galway deservedly pulled pulled level on 69 minutes through Mark Leech. I like many others missed this goal because I was to busy looking at our new mascot who had just made its way down in front of F and G.
With time running out it looked like it was going to be one of those nights until up popped Liam Burns to score his second goal of the season when he put the ball past the Galway keeper from Fenn’s corner to put Bohs back in front with only minutes remaining. Chris Turner also made an appearance with three minutes to go in place of Glen Cronin. Turners arival on the field was greeted with a chant of
“He wears the gloves, he wears the gloves, he wears the, Turner wears the gloves”.
Which is of course in relation to the Northern Ireland midfielder in an infamous video which sees him “performing” in some different positions then he normally would for Bohs.As the final whistle blew I breathed a huge sigh of relief and ran with Gary to catch the bus home. It wasn’t the best of performances but the main thing is we took the three points and are in an excellent position going into Tuesday game in Inchicore.
Bring on the Junkies!
Filed under: Home Games | Tags: Bohs, Cork, Dalymount park, Eircom League, NavanBohs
It’s fair to say I looked slightly out of place on my way to Dalymount on Sunday. Among the sea of green and gold Meath jerseys sat myself and my mate Jayo, me decked out in our famous red ‘n’ black stripes. I’ve worn the long-awaited new jersey pretty much everyday since I bought it last Saturday week before the Cobh trip. A cracking jersey it is too, and I love those strange looks I sometimes get when I wear it around Navan.
I love Sunday evening games. No rushing home from college, or in more recent weeks work, on a Friday evening to drop your belongings home and have a wash, then having to traipse back to Dublin for the match. Instead it’s a nice lie-in, in this case followed by some pub grub in town before hopping on the 109 just after 2pm. Off the bus on O’Connell St. and into Fibber Magees on Parnell St. (I know, I know…) we went for pre-match pints to loosen up the vocal chords. A couple of pitchers were thrown down the hatch and at about quarter to six as we left the boozer we were blinded by the sunlight as we wandered back up Parnell St. Frankie rang me to let me know that after the 8:30pm bus back home, there were no more buses until 11pm. Good ol’ Bus Éireann and their Sunday timetables. Walking to Dalyer just seemed like an awful lot of hassle so it was across to O’Connell St. we continued and onto the 122 bus instead. A foreign couple with some funny accents who were presumably from eastern Europe, or possibly Cork, asked if the bus went to “the stadium”, and I later discovered it was their first ever Bohs match. In the turnstiles and straight to the programme sellers, onto Burdocks for chips and then to the Phoenix Bar. No pitchers on sale there so it back to normal old pints of special-offer Stella for me. We stayed in the bar right up until kick-off waffling about random rubbish and watching Setanta’s preview of the match. The cameras then zoomed in on Frankie and his lovely yellow t-shirt, which had scores of Setanta viewers frantically adjusting the brightness on their TV sets before they were left blind.
The first half got underway with the “six-fingered banjo players” having much of the possesion without ever really troubling the Bohs defence. Ipswich reject George O’Callaghan sent a free-kick high over the bar and into the fairly populated Des Kelly stand. This season has seen a rise in the numbers in the Shed End, a result of some cracking work done with the Kids Go Free promotion.
10,000 free passes were also given to students of DCU for the match but the majority chose to be losers and instead study for their exams over watching the Big Club. Big mistake. Dave Mooney then latched on to a ball played through the heart of the Bohs backline but his first touch was too heavy and Brian “super keeper” Murphy raced off his line to save with his feet. Neale Fenn then had a tame effort from the edge of the box which seemed to take an eternity to reach the keeper. Joxer played a peach of a cross from the right, into the path of Glen Crowe who found himself with just the keeper to beat. The Jodi stand clenched their fists in unison, ready to celebrate the opener, only for Crowe to hit his volley straight at the legs of Cork keeper Michael Devine when it seemed impossible to miss. Ten minutes until half-time then and just as I was contemplating whether I’d go for another cheap pint of Stella during it or broaden my horizons a bit, Killian Brennan swung a free-kick in from the right which was nodded in by Neale Fenn. Bohs a goal up, and the strippers and whores were about to make some business. Half-time came. The atmosphere, singing-wise, in the first half wasnt’s great I thought. Nutsy had repeatedly commented recently on the atmosphere at home games being poor compared to that of away matches, and you couldn’t really argue with him either. In saying that, the NBB once again provided an abundance of colour in the form of flags, two-sticks, till rolls and smoke.
Up the steps we went then for the second forty-five. Glen Crowe was played through from the right by Joxer I think, but instead of taking the ball in his stride, he tried to be clever and catch Devine off guard from about thirty yards. His effort sailed high and wide though into the Shed End. O’Callaghan once again put a close range free-kick over the bar although this time it was closer and slightly more nervy for the Bohs crowd. Georgie boy was taking his fair share of stick from our lot. Though it was him laughing just under ten minutes from the end. his free-kick from the left side seemed to be sailing comfortably into the arms of Brian Murphy, only for Owen Heary to stick his head in the way and divert the ball into his own net. One all. Another one of those nights it seemed, and the 150 or so inbreds would be heading back south with a point. Shortly after, Joxer and Neale Fenn were replaced by Mark Rossiter and Jason Byrne. The last time Bohs played in front of the Setanta cameras on a Sunday evening, I’m sure you don’t need reminding of the late winner that gave us a 2-1 win against Drogheda United. It proved to be an omen. Jason Byrne played a neat ball into the path of the oncoming Rossiter, who smacked a low drive from twenty-five yards past Devine and into the bottom left corner.
The Jodi erupted. The place just became one huge moshpit. Bodies went flying all over the shop. Strangers hugged each other, well at least I did! It’s times like that which pay back for those nights you stood there watching rubbish draws against UCD and Bray, wondering why you’d bothered. We held on for the remaining three minutes or so plus stoppage time. The Bohs faithful sang their hearts out, this was the atmosphere Nutsy wanted. Two points off the top after the first series of games, away wins against the scum and Drogheda, only one loss and a nine game unbeaten league run. Safe to say that if any Bohs fan was offered that before the start of the season they’d have taken it with open arms. To the bar then for more cheap celebratory pints of Stella to waste the two hours before the bus came. The head was in a bit a bit of a state the morning after but it’s a small price to pay for a night like that…
So it’s Galway, fresh from their first win of the season, up next. Twice this season we have gone into a home game on the back of impressive away wins against our biggest rivals and the current champions, only to be held to draws at home to Bray and Derry City, so nothing can be taken for granted. Three points this coming Friday sets us up nicely for the trip to Inchicore the following Tuesday for a top of the table clash against the junkies. Oh and for the superstitious among you, it’s being shown on Setanta…
Allez le Big Club!
