"They were truly Bohemian in spirit," the writing on the wall reads. "The club was to wander from the Phoenix Park to Jones Road in 1893 before moving to Whitehall, Glasnevin in 1895 where they played until their permanent move to 'Pisser Dignam's Field' at Dalymount, Phibsboro in 1901. Certainly, the term 'Bohemian' was often used in the contemporary parlance of Dublin culture and society."
Sitting below this wall art, borrowed from a lecture given by Ciarán Priestley on the history of Bohemian Football Club in the Dublin City Library in September 2010, is director of football Pat Fenlon. We're in the boardroom of the club's offices in the Phibsborough shopping centre, which overlooks the aforementioned Dalymount Park, the club's home since 1901. Taking pride of place on the walls and furniture are mementoes of the club's European exploits over the years: a pennant from Greek side PAOK; a programme from the UEFA Cup first-round game against Rangers in 1984; a scarf from Luxembourg outfit F91 Dudelange. There are certainly some stories in this room.
Not long turned 55, the former Hibs manager has held his upstairs role with the League of Ireland side since January last year, following a spell of just over four years as general manager of Linfield, another of his former clubs. His return to Bohemians from Linfield was a neat reversal of the transfer move he made as a player, leaving Dublin for Belfast in 1994 in what was considered a fairly controversial switch at the time.
Returning to Bohs
But he is back in Dublin 7, where he posted his best stats as a club manager (106 wins in 174 games giving him a 60.92 per cent win rate) and won two League of Ireland Premier Division titles as well as an FAI Cup, Setanta Sports Cup, and League Cup apiece to add to the FAI Cup, Leinster Senior Cup, and Players' Player of the Year award he collected as a midfielder during his playing days.
It is ironic that Fenlon has come to find a home at a club nicknamed the 'Gypsies' and so named because of the players' 'wanderings' in search of pitches in their nascent stages, but perhaps also because of his connection with all four Dublin clubs - eight, if you count his time as a youth player with Tolka Rovers, Home Farm, Lourdes Celtic, and Rivermount. But there's just something about Bohemians, or Bohs, that clicks for Fenlon.
"When I came here as a player, Bohs hadn't won anything for a while, and I was fortunate that we won the cup - although we probably should have won the league as well; we got beaten on the last day," Fenlon recalls.
Bohemians needed just a draw at Dundalk but lost 1-0, meaning that at the end of the 1991/92 season, they had to go through not one, but two extraordinary round-robin play-offs with Cork City and Shelbourne to determine a league winner after all three had finished level on points. Despite the fact that Bohemians enjoyed a superior goal difference to their rivals, League of Ireland rules made no provision for winning a title in that manner, and Cork prevailed in the second attempt to establish a league winner.
"I really enjoyed my time here as a player and then when I came back as manager we were very successful, so when this opportunity arose [to come back as director of football] it was just something I didn't want to turn down. These things happen with some clubs. I've been here in a few different capacities now and they've all been enjoyable," Fenlon smiles.
"This is probably the hardest out of the three because there's a lot of work, a lot of structuring and a lot of change needed but it's a club on the up, as we all know. There are huge developments going on around the club so it's trying to structure things around that as well. Bohs is really just a club that's been really good to me so coming back was a no-brainer."
'I said I wouldn't go back to management, and I won't'
Fenlon departed Easter Road in November 2013, eventually returning to another of his former clubs in Shamrock Rovers to take the reins from August 2014 until January 2017, when he took on his first non-management role at Waterford as Technical Director, linking up with former Hibs striker Lee Power who had assumed control of the club some weeks earlier while Alan Reynolds, who was appointed the club's new head coach, had played under Fenlon at Shelbourne. Waterford won promotion to the League of Ireland Premier Division in time for the 2018 campaign but Fenlon departed in the February after 14 months, temporarily leaving football in order to work on Power's worldwide projects having played a key role in rebuilding the club. Given his dugout-free roles with Waterford, Linfield, and now Bohemians, I ask if it's safe to assume we won't see him prowling a technical area again any time soon.
"I'm done with management now, yeah. I said after I left Shamrock Rovers that I wouldn't go back to it, and I won't. I enjoyed my time in management; I was involved with a lot of really good clubs. But it's a difficult job now, I think it's getting harder to be a manager," Fenlon states.
"I had 14 or 15 years at it and I went in very young - I started when I was still playing and it sort of forced me into retirement at 32. It was enjoyable, I had some really good times, but I just felt it was time for a change, a different route or avenue. You can absolutely stay in management for too long and I think you see it even more so now, because of the pressure on managers.
"To be fair to managers in this league, there's so much money involved at the top level that it might be a bit easier, but at this level the criticism and the stick and everything that goes with it is still the same so it's a difficult job, and you feel for managers at times because you've been in that situation and I think this role helps me in that regard to help the manager whether it was at Waterford, or Linfield, to be able to give a little bit of help, and guidance and backing. And you know how people feel on the back of results. Football is so emotional; you can be up and down in a very short space of time so you need to be able to manage that, as a manager, and that's something I can help with having been through it myself," he says.
It's a timely point; Declan Devine was relieved of his duties as Bohemians boss a little over a month ago after a tough start to the season with Fenlon assuming interim-manager duties until Reynolds, still at Waterford as number two to manager Keith Long, stepped up to take the vacancy at Dalymount. After Monday night's 1-0 victory over Dundalk, Bohemians sit joint-second in the table with Reynolds having won three of his opening five games.
Chasing success with Bohs, and what that looks like
Unlike the Scottish Premiership, the Irish top flight lacks an obvious two-horse race for the title every season. Eight different teams have won at least one title in the last 20 years. Shelbourne, Bohemians, Shamrock Rovers, Dundalk, and Cork City have all won at least two titles while St Patrick's Athletic, Sligo Rovers, and Drogheda United have all won one title each. Shamrock Rovers have dominated since 2020 but they currently lie fourth and while they have a game in hand on the teams above them, it would be a little premature to assume the Tallaght outfit will walk the league for a fifth successive season. With current leaders Shelbourne five points ahead of Derry City and Bohs who are jostling for position just behind them, there's really no telling what way the league could go.
So with that in mind, and with so many teams battling it out for glory, what does success look like for Bohemians?
"I think it's changing," Fenlon says, thoughtfully. "The club went through a hard time but it came out of that, and it's in a good situation now with the stadium development, we've just purchased a new training facility and academy as well, so how is success measured? If we can get a new Dalymount full of punters going to games every week, and a new training facility, that's success in a way. But as a football club, and for a club like Bohs, winning things and qualifying for Europe is what supporters want.
"But that's not easy. The league is very difficult. There isn't a huge gap between a lot of the teams and you can see that in the table at the moment. It was the same last year: you can win two or three games and jump; lose two or three and you can fall. From a neutral point of view, it's probably pretty good because it doesn't become monotonous like it can feel in some countries around Europe where two or three teams have a major dominance. The Irish league is a little bit different in that regard; everyone feels they've got a chance - maybe not of winning the title outright, but a lot of teams feel like they can get those European positions which is so important for a lot of clubs."
Money certainly is tight in Irish football and Bohemians had their own financial near-squeak not that long ago. Just a cursory glance at the number of League of Ireland teams to have gone out of business since the turn of the Millennium illustrates just how much of a financial struggle it can truly be: Dublin City FC, founded in 1999 and dissolved in 2006; Limerick, who were formed in 1937 and liquidated in 2019; Kildare County FC, who lasted from 2002 to 2009; Sporting Fingal (2007-11); FC Carlow, who enjoyed a brief existence between 2008 and 2011; and Kilkenny City, founded in 1966, who resigned from the league in 2008 having been members since 1985.
Dublin's Originals, or how Bohs are doing things differently
But Bohemians are seeking to buck the trend. Backing for social causes has become a central part of its identity as a club and they wear that support on their sleeves - literally, in some cases. The club currently has an away shirt commemorating Thin Lizzy's concert at Dalymount in August 1977 while a couple of years back they issued a jersey with the message, 'Refugees Welcome' on the front. Supporters can also buy a top that pays homage to Bob Marley in a nod to his concert with the Wailers at the club's ground in 1980 - their sole Irish gig. Also on sale this year is a Palestine shirt, with 10 per cent of sales going to help children in the West Bank city of Tulkarem.
Not everyone has been enamoured by the marketing push, but it's getting results. Even for a Monday night game against Dundalk, Dalymount is a sell-out - and shirts are dispatched to all four corners of the globe.
Walking up the narrow lane to the main entrance to the ground, you are greeted by heartfelt graffiti on the front of the stand. "Love yourself", one slogan urges, while another states: "Love football, hate racism." The same message is plastered on the inside of the stand, accompanied by a clenched fist raised in defiance. The corner flags don't feature Bohemians' traditional black and red but rather the rainbow colours of the Pride movement. The club also employs a Head of Climate Justice and Sustainability and has a voluntary arts officer on the staff.
This is not your average football team.
"As a League of Ireland side, we don't have the huge revenue streams from TV or anything like that so the people in the marketing side of things have been really inventive around trying to grow the brand," Fenlon explains. "We all know there's a brand there for the local supporters which is fine, but you're never going to be able to grow as a club if that's all you're relying on. We have to try to grow the brand right around the place and the people tasked with doing that within the club have grown it dramatically and it's a huge help."
There's definitely a feel-good factor around Dalymount for their match against Dundalk - even if the wind means attractive football is at a premium and some of the refereeing decisions are eliciting the best (or was it worst?) of Northside wit from disgruntled fans. Even a couple of early season setbacks, including losing to bitter rivals Shamrock Rovers in the Dublin Derby and a disappointing home defeat by Waterford, have done little to dampen spirits, particularly given Friday night's victory in the Northside Derby with Shelbourne at Tolka Park.
It's certainly a better atmosphere than the one clinging to Easter Road at the moment although when Fenlon took the reins in 2011, Hibs having managed to pry him from the Bohs hot seat, things were particularly mutinous with the club floundering in the lower echelons after Colin Calderwood's exit. His successor was tasked with keeping the club up, with relegation in 1998 still relatively fresh in the mind.
Keep Hibs up, ask questions later
“When I went into Hibs, we were struggling a bit at the time and the remit was probably, ‘Stay in the Premier League’. It was ourselves and Dunfermline fighting it out to avoid falling through the trap door," Fenlon recalls. “We were fortunate to go to East End Park and win [in January 2012] and then we had that midweek game against them at Easter Road: huge crowd, and we started like a house on fire with three goals in the first 15 minutes. That pretty much sealed what we wanted to do when I came in; although not where the club wanted to or should be.
“When I came in I wasn’t surprised or taken aback by the level of expectation. I knew a lot about Scottish football. I was more a supporter of Scottish football than English football; English football never really interested me, but I’d been to a lot of games in Scotland so I knew the size of the club and I knew the expectancy that was there. There’s an intensity from the fans and the media, and it’s the same for a lot of clubs. I wouldn’t say that surprised me but it definitely took a bit of getting used to.
“That season we got to the cup final as well and obviously we were hammered by Hearts, and it was so disappointing. I’ve had people say to me, ‘Surely you would have wanted to lose the semi-final,’ but you can’t look at football like that. The expectancy at Hibs is massive, and rightly so. Hibs are a big club, and I think that some people outside of Scotland maybe aren’t aware of just how big they are, and of the demands and expectations from supporters.
“I felt like we made some progress the following season. We reached the cup final again and played Celtic and I think any time you’ve got Celtic or Rangers in a cup final, it’s going to be difficult. It was disappointing that the only two Scottish Cup matches I lost while I was at Hibs were both cup finals. But I did feel we were making progress."
Choosing to step down - and why
Perhaps unusually for a manager mulling over an exit, Fenlon had lost just one league match in eight before he felt things were starting to go wrong.
“I think we were sitting fifth at the time, and we lost a midweek League Cup game to Hearts. We’d played Aberdeen in the league on the Saturday at Easter Road and we were really poor, and I just felt after it that it looked as though I maybe wasn’t getting what I wanted out of the players," he recalls.
“So I was contemplating things after the Aberdeen game but we had Hearts at home on the Wednesday and we played really well, but went down to a really good goal. But of course, it doesn't matter how you lose; if you lose to Hearts, then the Hibs fans aren’t happy."
Fenlon stepped down, sticking to his guns despite the board asking him for a rethink. But he admits the events that transpired over the course of the season left him wondering if he had been too hasty in making his exit. Hibs won just four league games in the months following Fenlon's exit and a run of nine defeats in the final 12 matches set up a two-legged relegation play-off encounter with Hamilton. Despite a 2-0 away win in the first game, Hibs lost an early goal in the return, before conceding an injury-time equaliser that eventually led to a penalty shoot-out defeat as the Easter Road side joined their capital rivals in being relegated to the Championship.
“Looking at the bigger picture, we were sitting fifth in the league, the Scottish Cup hadn’t yet started, and I just thought maybe it was the right time to go," Fenlon explains, looking back. "When I came in the place wasn’t great, we were eleventh in the league and it was difficult, but this time I thought if someone new was to come in, they had a bit of a chance to stabilise, we were in a good position and there was no real pressure on. So that was my decision; I went to see the chairman Rod Petrie the next day [after the Hearts game] and said, ‘Listen, I think it’s the right time to make a change’. He did ask me to reconsider but I’d made my mind up. I just felt the timing was right from my point of view and I hoped that the team could get that kick from a new manager. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, as we all know. In fact, things went the opposite way.
“That was difficult at the end of the season, to see Hibs in the situation they were. And I did think, ‘Should I have stayed and steadied the ship?’ But football is difficult like that. We were due to play Motherwell on the Saturday after I left when Jimmy Nicholl took the team but I genuinely thought we’d be all right. As I recall it we were only five or six points off third when I left. I didn’t see what ended up happening coming, at all. I don’t think anyone did. The club had been really good to me and I just thought it was the right thing to do, to step away and let someone have a crack at it in a decent scenario where they weren’t just having to scrap to stay in the league.
“Before I left I did feel we were making slow progress. The final against Hearts and the European game against Malmö were absolute disasters, and you have to take them as a manager. The Malmö game was a bit different for me; we’d lost a lot of players, it was early in the season, and we just fell asunder - and I take the blame for that," he adds.
Fenlon's very own 'remontada' at the national stadium
Such heavy defeats in a national cup final and a European home game, particularly given Hibs’ relationship with that particular domestic trophy at the time, and the club's storied continental history, were always going to define Fenlon’s tenure at Easter Road. But there were still results to relish, scorelines to savour during his time in the capital - particularly one of the Hampden visits, the anniversary of which took place just last weekend.
“The Falkirk semi-final was incredible. It was one of those games that you actually get very rarely in football," Fenlon says, casting his mind back to the national stadium in April 2013. "At Hampden, as you know, the manager is a good bit away from the bench and I remember standing out there in the technical area on my own with Falkirk three goals up and I could see the Hibs fans streaming towards the exits and knew we had to do something. In fairness to the players, we made a couple of changes and they came on and did really well, we got back into it and sneaked it in extra time. It was a brilliant win, to go from the lowest low to such a high.
"To win a semi-final like that at Hampden was great. Both semi-finals I won at Hampden were great. But then to lose the two cup finals… I would have swapped a semi-final win to have won one of the finals. But yeah, it was a special game; really good goals, and Falkirk were excellent in the first half. It was just a magic game, really."
Given the turnaround in Hibs' performance - young Alex Harris, starting just his third senior match, scoring six minutes into the second half to start the most unlikely of comebacks - I ask about the scenes in the Hibs dressing room at the interval following Falkirk's three goals in 24 first-half minutes.
“I didn’t have to say much at half-time," Fenlon recalls. "There was a little bit of chaos; I remember coming into the dressing room a little bit after the players because I’d been trying to gather my thoughts, and when I got in there the players were having a pop at each other and there was a little bit going on - which is what you’d expect! So I just tried to keep things calm and told them that the next goal was going to be crucial. I knew if we could score first, and score early, it would galvanise supporters and give them a bit of a lift, so the message was really, just get the next goal and get yourselves going again. It was one of those crazy games with no logic to it. To play so poorly, and then play so well… I’ve played in games like that, I’ve managed games like that, I’ve been involved in games like that. But they don’t come around too often."
Griffiths and Doyle: a match made in Leith
A certain Leigh Griffiths played a not insignificant role in the game, scoring twice including the all-important winner even after seeing a penalty saved by Bairns 'keeper Michael McGovern.
“Leigh was special when I was at Hibs, and I think he showed that with what he went on to do," Fenlon says. "He was just a natural, natural finisher and goalscorer. A good player as well. People would have looked at his goal-scoring ratio which was fantastic but his all-round game as a small striker who was good in the air, strong, physically able to handle himself, able to run in behind and he had good link-up play too. He had the lot, he was really talented.
"It was just about trying to guide him in the right direction at times. He was difficult, but not bad difficult. People always ask me about managing Leigh and although he might have caused himself some problems, he never caused me any issues. It was just about guiding him because I knew with the talent that he had, he couldn’t let it go to waste and it was about telling him what he could go on to do if he just got the head down.
“And Eoin Doyle, who also scored in that semi, was the ideal foil for Leigh because he was so unselfish. He’d take defenders into areas they didn’t want to go, and Leigh liked to play on the shoulder of defenders and create a bit of space. They were good together when they did play together. Doyler did really well for us and went on to have a really good career down south. But Leigh was one of those talents that you don’t get to manage all that often."
Why Hibs is not an easy place to play - and how it helps to mould a player
He goes back to the summer of 2013, when trying to prepare for the upcoming season amid the loss of a handful of key players. As well as Griffiths returning to parent club Wolves and Doyle signing for Chesterfield, Fenlon lost midfielders David Wotherspoon and Gary Deegan while influential captain James McPake, who had shored up the defence in the previous campaign, struggled with injury.
“We probably brought too many players in at the one time, but it was more out of necessity at that stage," Fenlon admits.
"When you bring in young players on loan you’re always hopeful that they’ll go on and have good careers, which a lot of them did. The ones that disappointed me were the younger ones we brought through who haven’t really gone on to the level I thought they might. Good young players in the academy. We had to rely on them, because we weren’t able to go out and spend a serious amount of money on players.
"But Hibs is not an easy place to play. That’s not being critical of the fans, it’s just the way it is, and there are a few clubs outwith Celtic and Rangers like that because the expectancy is huge. Some people have to be able to handle it. It’s no different here at Bohs. You can sign some players and it’s a different level but there’s still that expectation and sometimes players might have real ability but don’t have the mentality to deal with that expectation and it’s part of the recruitment process to make sure they are able to handle a little bit of pressure. We all know what Easter Road is like when things aren’t going well. It can be a difficult place for players. But as a player, if you can deal with that level of expectation, it can help you because you’re always going to have ups and downs in your career."
'I was blessed to manage Hibs'
Despite the way things ended, and the unanswerable question of how things would have panned out had he stayed on, Fenlon looks back fondly on his time at Easter Road.
“I was blessed to manage Hibs. To lead a club like Hibs out in one cup final, never mind two - even though they didn’t go well, no one can take that away from me. We had some bad days, but there were some great days. We beat Celtic at Easter Road, we beat Hearts in the cup just a few months after they’d beaten us in the final, we won at Tynecastle, we held Celtic to a really good draw at Celtic Park as well as drawing with them at Easter Road.
“That night against Dunfermline was special as well because the place was mobbed, fans were in early, and the place was bouncing, and it’s a difficult place to play at when the home fans are bouncing. It was a fantastic time for me personally. The club was so well structured and I got all the help I needed from people behind the scenes. The Hearts cup final and the Malmö game were personally disappointing, because I felt I’d let so many people down and when that happens it does hurt you a little bit - more than a little bit, actually.”
He also has his own Scottish Cup tale, having secured a ticket to Hampden to see Hibs finally do what he had hoped to oversee. He admits he's baffled by the club's failure to properly kick on after ending their 114-year hoodoo but is hopeful Bill Foley's investment can help take the club to the next level after a few years of teetering on the brink of sustained progress.
“I was at the Scottish Cup final in 2016. What a day - I ended up down in Leith with a few pals who are Hibs fans. It was a brilliant day... and so was the next morning to be fair! It was really good. The cup final record was a little bit of a noose around the neck, and then it was gone," he says.
“There’s probably a level you can get to in Scotland [for clubs outside of Celtic and Rangers] but Hibs haven’t reached it for a long time. I was surprised that the cup win didn’t lead to a constantly upward trajectory; things have sort of stayed a bit where they were; skirting around fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh.
“It is a bit of a mystery to me - other clubs are improving of course, but everything is in place at Hibs so why has it not got to the level of expectation that people have, even those within the club? It must be so frustrating for the Hibs fans. I still stay in touch with a few lads who I got to know during my time there and I know they are frustrated. It’s also harder to take when Hearts are doing well.
"But everything is there: the structure is really good, the stadium is impressive, the training ground is top class. The bit that’s missing is investment in the team, but that looks like changing this summer. It's just about getting the right blend between the people running the club and the manager. It's fluctuating, but I think it just needs the right dynamic. You’d always expect Hibs to be scrapping about for third or fourth, minimum. Hopefully they're doing that on a consistent basis soon."
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