The fan-owned club where refugees and the homeless are welcome

This coming weekend, Bohemian FC – Bohs to everyone who knows them – play their final match of the season. Counterintuitively, now also begins some of the most frantic weeks of the year, when players, staff and fans must come together to help out.

It started in 2018, when the club had the idea to provide a Christmas present to every child in the closest direct provision centre – an enforced accommodation block for asylum seekers – to the club’s Dalymount Park ground.

Hundreds of people turned up to buy a present and they ran out of children’s names. The following year, Bohs extended the same idea to every direct provision child in Dublin and suddenly the dressing rooms and club bar were filled with toys.

By now, the Christmas present initiative has spread to include every affected child in Ireland. Bohs must raise €100,000 (£87,100) and then work within a convention centre where players and fans pack gifts. The logistics of getting 3,000 different people to buy presents just couldn’t work for a club of this size. Still, next month every present will be delivered from the club across the length and breadth of the country.

It makes an extraordinary difference to those who have so little. Lucky Khambule is a former asylum seeker in Ireland, and co-founder of the Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland (MASI). He has worked with Bohs for a number of years to campaign for the end of direct provision; he sees what a Christmas present means and what the rest of their work does too.

“How personal is it, when someone wraps a present, as if it was for their own child, and writes a tag?” Lucky says. “They might not realise how important that is. But when a person is doing that, out of their own will, they are sharing love. A present that is wrapped in love creates a smile for someone who might not otherwise smile.”

Founded in 1890 as a membership cooperative that provided a single vote to each member and disallowed anyone from taking profit out of the club, Bohemians are rightly proud of their history. They have never suffered relegation from Ireland’s top flight. They had an active citizenship model. They had no wealth extraction. They were run by volunteers.

But they were also drifting. Bohs’ membership continuously dipped and rose somewhere between 400 and 550 people and virtually all of them were there just to watch the men’s team play. If the team did well, they were happy and if it didn’t, they weren’t – it never really stepped beyond that. It was one-dimensional and it was fairly typical of its sport.

By 2011, Bohs had almost gone out of business. They were effectively balance sheet insolvent and running close to reckless trading. Lynn, the club’s only paid employee, was afraid to answer the phone and the door. The club had to cancel the contracts of players, cut the budgets by 95 per cent and there were board meetings where those present suspected that it might have been their last.

Two things happened. Firstly, the members were asked at an Extraordinary General Meeting whether begging phone calls should be made to high-profile Irish sportspeople or organisations to canvas for financial help, but rejected the idea. Those members would rather the club sadly pass than compromise upon the model and pass it into the hands of private investment.

Secondly, the financial emergency forced deep introspection. Bohs needed help from the local community because it needed more members, and as a result it needed to move closer within the bosom of that community. Is next year going to be the same as last just because it was the same 10 years ago? Or could Bohs become something else to make the next decades their own? Daniel Lambert, who joined the board in 2011 and is now the chief operating officer, explains:

“We decided to set out to answer a question: ‘How can we give people a sense of pride in the club, not just the team?’. And it became clear that we needed to be a home for all of them. We exist in a very diverse inner-city area: migrants and natives, poverty and wealth, homelessness, international issues, a prison.

“If we reflected back the problems that these people face and helped them to tackle them, while also being a football club, they would stick with us. Far too many people are in need – but as a collective we can all help each other and the club can be the conduit for that.”

And it worked. Bohs’ membership has grown by at least six times since and there is a waiting list because every game at Dalymount is sold out. They turned fully professional last summer. A new stadium is in the pipeline. They have 10 permanent members of off-field staff. They have more than 50 youth teams, a women’s team, an amputee side, disability teams, an LGBTQ+ supporters’ group.

The vast majority at Bohs are partly, majoritively or entirely motivated by the same message: we are here to do good and cause no harm. Theirs is a joint mission – football and humanitarian – and they aspire to achieve at both.

The work around the asylum system is probably Bohs’ most famous and it’s not just for Christmas. Their “Refugees Welcome” football shirt, released in partnership with MASI and Amnesty International, raises funds for MASI’s work. Bohs have called for an end to the asylum system in Ireland directly to the government.

They have worked with Sport for Life Palestine to raise money for children to have the “right to play” in Tulkarem Refugee Camp in the West Bank, an item on the human rights charter. They sponsored a music degree for a member of the refugee community (from part of the Bob Marley-themed shirt proceeds), because it costs €12,000 (£10,450) and so they would never otherwise get a chance. They provide facilities for campaign groups to work and host meetings.

Asylum seekers are bused in from direct provision centres and given free tickets for home games, with volunteers such as Francis helping to oversee the transport. Francis, himself non-Irish born, has seen the difference that match attendance has for those who might never have attended live sport before and certainly have never felt part of a community like this in Ireland.

“Bohemians has given life to many people,” Francis says. “I have discovered that it is a place where we have people from different countries, characters, languages. The club has been able to bring us together in one room, creating happiness. Nothing else matters when you come here.

“When we join this club as a fan, we have a dream to move this club forward. You want others to experience the same thing for the first time and you want to help. After the match, if there is anything to do to clean the stadium, organise anything, I’m only too happy to do it.”

Bohs also have a programme for children from non-Irish backgrounds to join the academy programme at no cost as a means of integration with one another and with children with Irish roots and have expanded that programme to some of their partner clubs.

Fernando is one of the coaches of these children, who moved to Ireland from Brazil several years ago. He was looking for a football team to support and found Bohs on the Fifa video game. Now he’s volunteering at weekends with boys and girls of between five and seven years old. He’s one of so very many who tell me that Bohs has just got under their skin.

“It’s just so good to see how much all these children, who might never meet, love football,” he says. “But it’s all because of Bohs making it happen. I’ve sent a shirt back to my Dad back in Brazil so now he’s a fan too. Whenever we speak he always wants to know about what’s going on and what we’re going to do next.”

One of the most intriguing aspects of Bohs, when you spend time with its members, is how the membership model has been relied upon to produce a Rolodex of emotional investment from experts in a variety of different fields that allows them to scope their work around the local community. The tendency initially is to see this as a “village fete” scenario where someone turns up and is given a job to do; the truth is very different.

Seán McCabe is probably the best example. He was a policy officer on climate justice at the Mary Robinson Foundation in Dublin, advising the UN on climate action. He also went to Bohs matches and knew Dan Lambert. Fast forward several years, and McCabe became the first Climate Justice Officer to be appointed in world football and Bohs have climate action as a core element of their strategy. Of their 10 permanent non-football staff, three are employed to work on climate engagement strategies.

That gives Bohs the vital authenticity required when asking for buy-in from a community and also greater respect externally. Seán has given presentations to the Eredivisie on how they can best tackle the issue. He is leading a project with the European Football For Development network that includes La Liga, Werder Bremen, FC Twente and Ferencvaros. He has worked with the NBA’s Golden State Warriors to offer them advice on climate strategy. It is clear that some aspects of this work extend way beyond Dalymount Park. Again, Bohs are simply the conduit.

McCabe’s firm belief is that too many in football are looking at it all wrong. He cites the example of the Eredivisie: the clubs produce roughly 97,000 tonnes of CO2 per year, around 0.05 per cent of the nation’s emissions. But the fans who follow the Eredivisie clubs are, in their daily lives, responsible for around 50 per cent. Rather than overly focusing on how a club can reduce its own impact, then, they should be trying to engage their community – local area, supporters – to understand the landscape and equip people to take change.

“There is a need to move urgently on the climate crisis and few cultural entities have the reach of football, into every community of every corner of the planet” McCabe says. “I’ve been working for a long time before this and been a football fan for a long time too. I think people see that there is a real opportunity that we can come up with solutions that are meaningful, that work for the community, and that we’ll be able to spread faster than most organisations.”

But it isn’t easy. You do struggle to convince people.

“Clubs can get shy about going into communities, because they are afraid of being called hypocrites,” McCabe says. “It’s the greatest paradox we could find ourselves in: everyone wants a case study for a transition that has never been done before. I think that’s partly because the environmental movement has had a bad habit of preaching and talking down. Most of the advice is punitive: shorter showers, turning off heating.”

“We can come up with strategies that bend the emissions curve, but if those strategies heap misery on those who are struggling they will only last a short period of time. Those people will despair at the change and they will vote in someone who vows to do away with it all. Over the last ten years we have seen all the evidence we need that people will vote for those who trick them into believing that they are on their side. So long term action has to tend to a community’s needs: clean cities, warmer homes, cheaper electricity, safer streets.”

The answer, becoming a theme by now, is about engagement. If people in your community believe that you want the best for them, they will follow you down the road. McCabe’s colleague Kathlyne is overseeing the project management of a new space that will serve as an education centre on climate issues and provide a new multi-purpose space for the local community. As ever, the locals all mucked in to get it ready.

“A survey that we put out with the European Football For Development Network highlighted that football fans trust clubs more than they trust politicians,” McCabe says. “That’s important here and how we use that trust. If we preach, if we talk down, if we create false solutions, if we tell them to do small things that make their life harder while large entities are polluting en masse, people see through that nonsense. So we have to be smarter and treat that trust as sacred and use it to better the lives of people who we are engaged with.”

The great tenet of being a humanitarian football club is universal inclusion. The moment you exclude – implicitly or otherwise – any element of your community then your entire model begins to crumble. There cannot be a choice. You must be an open door and a helping hand for all.

Some of the most groundbreaking work that Bohs do lies behind the foreboding grey archway and blue door that greets you at the front of Mountjoy Prison, barely three minutes’ walk from the south-east corner of Dalymount Park. It is led by community director Tommy Hynes, another within that emotionally invested Rolodex. Hynes had worked with the homeless in America and heroin addicts in Dublin before he took on this volunteer role.

The initiative involved running a mini-league within Mountjoy, often mixing up the teams between prisoners on different landings to promote greater integration. Talks were given about the importance of integration through sport and education. Over time, Hynes and other volunteers worked out that the rate of reoffending amongst those who played sport within their initiative was far lower than the average. Some of them began playing for local clubs and stuck with the game.

Other ideas became action: a 5k Park Run in the prison to bring competition and motivation to exercise; comedy and entertainment shows; a sign language course that Hynes says has been very successful; another Christmas routine, in which prisoners cook dinner for the elderly amongst the community at the football club. The most important are the talks in schools about education, sport and community. Prevention is far preferable to cure.

“We wanted to know why people were staying away from crime,” says volunteer Jeff Conway, Hynes’ nephew who has a masters in criminology. “The answer was obvious: meaningful relationships, at home and in community. Participating in community events, building that trust between both parties. These people were disconnected, born into disconnection and grew up there. We just showed them different sides of life. It might sound obvious, but all they knew is to do what they had to to survive.”

“At one of those Christmas dinners,” says Hynes, “we sit everybody next to each other to talk. One of the prisoners came to be and said that he really hoped that he hadn’t stolen from the person he sat next to. One of the older people said that if she had had that boy’s life, she would probably have ended up doing the same thing. That’s what matters here: understanding and empathy.”

The ideal is that those relationships remain meaningful long after they have existed in person because they act as emotional pathways to the future. I spoke to Michael [real name changed], who had once been a prisoner who the club had helped by getting him in volunteer work after his release. Now he’s spent years taking teams into the prison to play and arranging games.

“They begin to look forward to you coming in, so you make a difference. They ask about life on the outside. But you want to check they’re doing OK, so they make a difference on you too. Five, six years later I still see them around and they’re doing well. Some might not get out of that cycle, but some will.”

Another fascinating aspect of Bohs – and one we’ve deliberately left until last – is how the football team interacts with these initiatives. One accusation against the club (although it’s hardly damning) could be that they are less of a football team and more of an activist organisation that happens to have 11 players on the side.

That criticism would ignore all the participation in the game of the youth and children’s teams and beyond, but you take the point: if Bohemians can be successful on the pitch, it makes that cynicism invalid. It also creates a symbiosis between the two pillars of this club that will make it more powerful. When the team is doing well, the community will feel more engaged with it and so buy-in is easier. When buy-in is easier, the club has more power to engage and inspire. When the club engages, it is more likely to attract more members and so grow.

That goes the other way too. The League of Ireland has rich owners and is awash with private investment. That undoubtedly makes life harder for Bohs. But then it also makes their off-field work more important, because it is a crucial element of their identity. They don’t sell out Dalymount because they just finished midtable in the Premier Division.

“It wasn’t until I moved here that I really understood what it meant,” says manager Declan Devine. “I’d seen the growth as an outsider, but then you live it. The inclusion, the community-based projects, how valuable every member is. I come from a background where we had little, during the Troubles in Derry in the 70s and 80s. It’s mind boggling and inspirational to see how much hard work they put into helping all different people.

“As such, we’re in a very privileged position when you put the jersey on. We’re only ever borrowing it. I’m only loaned to this job, and the task is to leave it in a better place. The ability to put smiles on faces is everything, and the other side of this club warms you up and keeps you warm.”

Not unrelated: Bohemians face St Patrick’s Athletic in the FAI Cup final on Sunday afternoon. It is their shot at a first major trophy in 14 years, thus ending their longest drought in half a century. Victory would be proof that humanitarian work and a successful football team are not both simultaneously possible to achieve, but also fuel each other.

The thing that strikes as so special about Bohs to an outsider is their ability to simultaneously operate on a micro and macro scale, given the comparative size of a club that went entirely full-time last summer and still has only 10 permanent staff. They buy presents for kids and offer free tickets, but also aid a nationwide campaign to end direct provision. They have games of football with prisoners but also have a strategy to prevent crime at source. They engage with the local community on climate change but also work with vast organisations to lead the same message across the game.

It would be very easy, and forgivable, to focus on Dublin 7. But then Dublin 7 is only a mirror of the world: a diverse community where problems are common and more easily sold by unity than division. And all of this is powered by a huge number of volunteers who are bursting with pride about what they do and the difference they hope to make. It is a deeply alluring, inspiring process of kindness aiming to beget more kindness.

Within that world, inside and outside Dublin 7, we must ask what we want our football clubs to be and who we want them to be for. The cup final matters, because the business of football will always be football. But if we can agree that their role is as a community asset, to make as many people as possible as happy as possible through as many means as possible, Bohs are already more successful than most.