Interview with Kieran from “Section O”, Longford Supporters Group, and who also runs his own brilliant blog “Between the Stripes” on all things Longford Town FC, well worth checking out……

Section O Facebook

Between the Stripes Facebook

So what’s your name?

Kieran Burke

And Section o?

Yes, Section o, we are going for our 15^th year now, since 2001 the group was set up, I haven’t always been over to that side of the ground myself but 15 years overall now so…

And why Longford Town, why the LOI?

Kind of strange actually cause I was born in England myself, but I am Irish, my family is Irish, so we moved here in 2003 and Jesus I thought when moved here I thought it was fantastic that the local area had its own football team and I thought Jesus this is something I can really get behind. Went to my first game in 2003, think it was a league game at home against cork city, I think we lost but, ever since then I have always been passionate about the town and heavily involved with it the last few years

What got you into section o, what was the setting up of that?

Well section o kind of went away for a few years, there was always a few lads that stuck loyal to it but when we were in the first division they were dark days, the attendances were poor, and there wasn’t many sticking to it but then for I think it was for 2013 or even 2012 when we were making a push for the first division title one of the lads said maybe we can get this going again and made a big push to get as many people over to that side of the ground as possible, ever since then I have been hooked, I just love the whole atmosphere to it.

Since you have been following them, what has been the best season, the highlight for you?

It has to be 2014 winning the first division, three days in a row out celebrating after that it was absolutely fantastic. It’s hard to know whether anything like that will be matched again but even if we got relegated and people say it would be great if we went down and won it again, but it would never be the same again, seven years in the first division struggling to get back and finally doing it, so that definitely

What do you think of tonight’s game anyway, it was a 1 all draw with Bray?

Am I allowed to swear on this?

Yeah of course, ha, it’s a drinking website you can say whatever you want to say!

My eyes are bleeding after that game, that was absolutely SHITE

It was pretty even though?

Pretty even because both teams were absolute dross. I have never seen so much long ball played in my life…I don’t know what type of shape the team is playing in …. It’s going to be a long season I think…

So what do you think about 2016 then, what would be considered a good season?

Oh anything about 10^th place I will be celebrating like a league title because I don’t think compared to last year’s squad….I don’t think it’s there at all

So what players….I know its 4 games in, but what players should we look out for Longford anyway?

Kevin O’Connor definitely, he is getting on a bit now, but he still is only 30, still young enough in LOI terms but he is just a fantastic midfield player, so good on the ball, he wasn’t great tonight, but I don’t think he is fully fit, injured last week, so maybe not fully back at it, Josh O’Hanlon is on loan from England, from Bournemouth, so he should pick up as the season goes on and then Jamie Mulhall is a very talented player

So just a question. Rivals, it must be Athlone town

Athlone town, yeah that’s a big rivalry, a lot of people don’t think it when they talk about LOI rivalries, they talk of Shelbourne, or they talk about Bohs-Rovers …but when the two teams are going well, which isn’t that often,  but when the two teams are going well and when a derby game comes up ..there isn’t an atmosphere like it, its unbelievable…

Is it hard to get people out to the Town,

Yeah its very hard

Ye guys I thought were pretty impressive tonight, you made an effort

We made an effort, I suppose the numbers weren’t great, but we did make a lot of noise, you can probably tell from my voice but we are trying again to get another big push on this year and try to get people out to games but it really isn’t easy especially when the team isn’t as going as well as people might have hoped …..its not easy so….

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Longford Town, football away days

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Interview

Short chat with Stephen from the supporters group, UCD AFC supporters club.

My name is Stephen and I’m secretary with the UCD AFC supporters club and we were created in 2010 just to give a bit of a structure and direction for UCD fans going to matches.

And did you attend UCD yourself as a student!

I never did, no, in my teenage years I looked at the league of Ireland senior division table, it was only one long list at the time and I thought ok well I am got to have to start supporting a Dublin team here and Bohemians and Shamrock Rovers were at the top and I thought no they were too successful for me so I looked right down and it was all names of country towns, Drogheda, Athlone, and Dundalk, and right down at the bottom was UCD and Shelbourne, and Shelbourne I thought, just in case Shelbourne are really, really bad, I better just support the team ahead of them, that’s UCD. So I started supporting UCD.

Ok, and how long ago was that?

That was in ’83, I was watching them from the paper let’s say and from radio, and I started going to matches in ’87, 1987

And what kind of crowds do you get to support UCD? Do you get any students? Do they actually bother coming down, do you get them out of the bars?

Well yeah, it can be tricky, especially on Fridays nights. First of all supporters do come, from the campus to support players who are studying in their own faculty so you will have little groups of 2’s and 3’s and that, all the time coming down, and then occasionally especially when the pressure of exams are off you’ll get more groups coming down and maybe a singing section as well, coming through in the summer.

And I want to ask about the team, is it semi-professional or is there a few professionals or is there some students or what, what is the structure?

In the recent past it’s been mostly students and then the odd players who are especially returnees who had a connection with a club and the university before so we would say we are kind of part time graduates, students and then graduates, we even have leaving cert students in our squad as well

Ok that’s pretty cool. And all those years, the best season?

Well it probably would be a premier division season, there has been little good spells, I think I’m going to say a period of time, we were 9 years in the premier division from 85 to 94 and so that was my best time supporting UCD, and I’d like to go back there. Now we do consider ourselves a premier division team even though we are in the first division this year because we spent I think only three seasons in the first division in the last 21 years, so we do consider ourselves definitely premier division, but yeah that spell of matches, there was one year in 99/2000 where we finished fourth and qualified for the InterToto cup and then we played in Bulgaria, and then the following June, that early, so June 2000 was a good time.

And the European adventure last season?

That was amazing, that’s was 4 matches in July, was incredible, especially we were granted access to the Uefa cup very late, in March through Uefa’s own fair play calculations so Ireland got a place and that was given to UCD, and just the preparations and the amount of work that the club had to put in to prepare for that, because we held two home games here at the UCD bowl and that was very special for us that people would say no, no outside of UCD and the LOI they would insist it would have to be moved but we showed we can hold them here

You did the league proud I think, for a small club really…

I agree with you, there was a bit of negativity saying why should they, they are only first division, and its UCD and they are going to embarrass us, but we won our first game against a Luxembourg team here and then we travelled away a week later and it was just an incredible emotional match in Luxembourg because the players were out on their feet by the end of it but we went through into the next round.

And what about this season so far, how do you think its panning out?

It’s slow at the moment, Limerick have set their stall out, they have won six games out of six , and they look like they will completely dominate the league, so it’s for the lesser places, 2^nd of third or play off places so we will really be fighting for that but it’s not over yet for the first place but we have Limerick next week, but at the moment the signs are they will dominate the league, but we will look to get off into the play off places again and hopefully we will get up through that.

And just one or two players to look out for, we should note?

 We have a centre back Maxi Kouogun, and it’s his second season here

He is very strong!

He is strong at the back, and he is scoring up front, he is our leading scorer at the minute with 4 goals and they have all come from headers from corners from Kieran Marty Waters, so Maxi as a centre back, and maybe a new player for us is Georgie Kelly, he came to us from Derry City, and he always looks lively, and hopefully he will be a good player for us this year, he is a new player.

How did you manage to get Kieran Marty Waters?

Well he would be one of the lets say part time professionals if you like rather than just graduates, I think we just gave him traction

Because he came from Shamrock Rovers, didn’t he?

He did come from Shamrock Rovers, he was having a quiet time there and he wasn’t getting much off a game, I think there was a few people ahead of him, so we just obviously gave him a package, and invited him to say what we are doing here and he was attracted to it.

So why do you think people should pop along to their LOI team?

Cause its local, you are going to meet people that you probably didn’t know, went to games from other circles in your life, you are supporting players who are playing at the top league in the country, and this is the best that is available, there is great friendliness and hospitality at ALL LOI grounds, I mean you go anywhere, and yet there is still a kind of a solidarity as well between us as well because we feel we are up against it with even other sports in the country as well as football in neighbouring countries as well.  We fell there is a lot of emphasis on other football but not Irish football, so we have a solidarity there between ourselves and also then at the matches themselves you have small groups singing and chanting right through the game and there is a lot of colour and you can be part of the noise or you can sit and watch the noise.

I mean the package is ok too, I mean tonight’s game, it was good I thought, a good game

Yeah we had 4 goals in the first half

A lot of chances as well

Exactly, yeah Drogheda equalised twice, and we are a bit disappointed about that, but that’s how tough the first division is, there is about 4 teams that are all about similar standard and they are looking for two play off places.

Ok thanks, that’s grand

Ok thank you

Full article here

UCD AFC football away days

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Interview

Short chat with Sean from the supporters group, Forza Rovers, Sligo Rovers most fervent supporters who one can see in the small Jinks Avenue Stand

Sean for Forza Rovers

Group’s going now 9 years. Next year will be our tenth year

It was going great for our first you know 5 or 6 years

The last few years it kind of died down a bit

A lot of lads getting old, Emigration you know, things like that

But actually our group was nearly Coming to an end at one stage there last year

And we were kind of saying, you know….the numbers weren’t really justified calling ourselves an ultras group so

So we started kind of recruiting a few young lads again and…..

Things are on the pick up again so………..

 

But you have a very impressive social media, I have to say…the website and on Facebook

Yeah but that was part of the drive of getting young lads, more young lads involved

We kind of kept to ourselves a lot of the time, it was kind of a very close, very close knit group but we kind of opened up things a lot more the last while

 

Sligo has always been a soccer town, I mean what’s the history about that, why….. I mean even in the rough times you do have a general good support in the town

I suppose traditionally it is a garrison town going back…………….and football has been played in Sligo since the 1880s you know so….. Gaelic never really took off here, you know it’s kind of more seen out in the county more so than in the town itself.

So that’s probably why

 

And how far is that reach from the town, does it go into the country. The county of Sligo, or?

Oh yeah, yeah, like myself, I’m not from Sligo town myself you know, So like a lot of lads

We got fans from you know like all over the north west really

I know a lot of fans from Leitrim, mayo, all over sligo

Like there’s North Sligo, it’s like a massive community

Course because Summerhill school used to be a boarding school, years ago, so you got a lot of lads coming in from Roscommon, Mayo, staying there, that’s kind of how it took off

 

And what about yourself then, how long have you been supporting the rovers?

Mid 90s my dad started bringing me, the early mid 90’s

Then, the first time we used to stand on the terrace kind of beside the shed

And then when I kind of got old enough I was allowed into the shed!

Some crazy nights there as a young lad

So its kind of a progression then is it?

Ah yeah, yeah it was like that, it was good, you know it was good

 

So what about the best season all those years you followed them then?

Oh it has to be when we won the league you cant beat that you know

In fairness, like I know the last two years people are saying things have gone downhill a bit but still when we were in the first division, and struggling and you know and 600 people in the ground, you are looking round the place and no atmosphere, the place was dead

I still think its good now you know

We won the cup in 94, that was when I started getting involved following rovers, and my dad started bringing me back then

 

What about your cult heroes then, what are the cult heroes of the club?

Of the club in total? There’s plenty

but at the moment

Raf is the cult hero at the moment, local lad

Is has been here a long time hasn’t he? I cant seem to believe he is still playing!

Ah no he is something else raf is

Probably score tonight

Hopefully anyway yeah

But no we have plenty of cult heroes down through the years

Ndo was unreal there

Myself I always kind of have something for local players, it’s the main thing to kind of support

 

The guy that won you the league, was it right to sack him? It’s like Leicester a little bit!

Barraclough. A lot of people weren’t happy with his tactics, his signings and blah, blah, blah. Personally I think he deserved to see out the end of the season and his contract

It left an awful lot of instability there

When he left we had caretaker managers and this that and the other

I think we are still suffering from that time but hopefully things will improve now

This season, what the hell is happening this season, Jesus!

Yeah, a look it….its a bit soon to call for a managers head and all that but…….

It was 6 games last year before we got a win so it was a struggle

Look, we will see how it goes….

 

The LOI is a small place but are Sligo too big to go down!?

No, there’s nothing like that. Look, we have been down before and we have been up and down…..a ten team league so its really going to be tight this year. It;s not looking good at the moment but hopefully…

Are there any players that perhaps people wouldn’t know coming in from the outside, any young players we should look out for or any up and coming talent?

 

Ah I don’t know, we don’t really have anyone at the moment. Maybe it’s the way the manager is playing the side…..there is no one really that I could see. There are a few lads there but there is no one really that I can see that’s going to…..….

 

Is it difficult to get people into the showgrounds?

No…..last week weekend against st pats the crowd was down, think it was down 1300,  cause it was Friday night football.

But if a game is on Saturday and we dont get our games moved by television or FAI poor fixture listing, no but a Saturday night traditionally great support and it’s always the way

 

So what should  I expect tonight, in terms of atmosphere, going into the ground?

Bray isn’t ….is not a crowd puller, never will be

They are never going to be a crowd puller, you know there’s no rivalry with Bray. they are doing alright this year and they will do well but Its not going to be a massive crowd puller

Hopefully with st Patricks weekend there should be a big crowd down
Atmosphere? We will see how it goes?

Just a few more questions

Rivals? I guess its Derry and Galway

No no Shams, fucking shams, fucking hate them

That was my next question, the other rovers, are they not rovers?

Shams for us!

Whats the copyright for that!

Well if you are in town, everyone likes to say rovers because if you say Sligo they presume you were at the Gaelic game

So rovers are rovers and shams are shams

When they come to town then is it……everybody’s a bit on edge

Yes it can get a bit heated at times alright

Yeah everyone is fired up for playing shams obviously you know

They probably see us as country bumpkins, come down act the bollix, but …fuck them!

 

So in terms of the season we have at the moment what’s your expectations, at this early stage it’s just avoid relegation

Yeah definitely, if you had asked me when last season had ended, players signed up early and it was looking good, I was saying we could push for a top four but now survival at the moment, and we take each game as it comes

 

Time for pints, come on lets go! Thanks man

Ok lets go

Anyway, here is my day out in video form!

Full article here

Sligo Rovers, football away days

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Interview

Short chat with Daniel Lambert, a Strategic Planner with Bohemian Football Club Limited (and also co-owner of the Bang Bang Cafe)

email: daniel@bohemians.ie

Daniel Lambert is my name and I look after a lot of the strategic planning for bohemian football club.

They call Bohemians, I see on the advertisement, the peoples club, can you explain that please?

Yeah, basically I suppose soccer has been, in recent years, football or soccer has been associated with owners, individuals, corporations and Bohs is the complete opposite of that. For 127 nearly 128 years we have been owned by a couple of hundred ordinary men and women, in Dublin, so it’s the peoples club in the true sense. Someone like Everton used the phrase when it actually doesn’t hold true, the club is literally owned by ordinary people, and its ran for their enjoyment and to be passed onto another group of people.

And what ways have the club reached out to the ordinary people?

Oh we do a whole litany of things, you may have seen earlier this week we were selected, 12 LOI clubs applied for youth funding in a project called More than a Club and that’s a reflection on how good clubs are integrating into the local community. Ourselves and cork were selected, yesterday is was announced
We do walk in football with mentally challenged people, walk in football with older people, we do a programme in Mountjoy prison to try and help people refrain from reoffending when they emerge from prison, there is actually a group, our club president, is over a prison in the Netherlands right now, tonight, a group of ex-prisoners in Mountjoy are playing with a group of bohs players over there
We do a whole range of things, we have a project for school completion and….

So what about yourself, how long have you been supporting Bohs….?

I was brought since I was a baby….so 30 years.

so you had no choice then

No, no choice at all!

Best season all those years?

For me actually the best season was probably last season! As a fan I suppose I was unusual in that I was on the board for a lot of the years, we had severe trouble and I actually realised in retrospect that the Fenlon years and the other years where we won a lot of trophies behind the scenes were the worst years the club had ever had. And id hand them all back if I could and not have almost destroyed the club.
I think that last year there really was a sense of togetherness, Dalymount was saved, we had a group of honest players on the pitch and we didn’t win anything but for me the feeling around the club is better than its ever been.

So was that serious then, really?

Absolutely. The club blew a serious amount of money in a very short space of time for trophies that really don’t mean anything if you talk about preserving your club that was passed down, that was put in severe jeopardy for trophies over a very short space of time.

then I guess the general consensus is that Keith Long is doing a good job?

Amazing job, yeah, in fairness, Keith’s done a great job and I suppose for Keith he has come to Bohs at a time everyone is fully aware of the situation and what we are trying to do and he has been giving an awful lot of leeway that perhaps other managers weren’t in the past and that’s a good thing. People are realistic about where we are, what our budget is and they know we are not going to win the league, and when you put a group of players on the pitch like Keith has who just have effort and honesty about them, it’s hard not to applaud them
(so this season so far, your more or less mid table, your safe aren’t you?)
Yes, I think we are more or less safe. It would be nice to win tonight, you know Pats were one of the clubs that wanted to go for the ten team league, so id love to see pats go down, and we weren’t in favour of it obviously, yeah so I hope we win tonight and I think we will finish mid table.

your cult hero of the club, all those years?

Tony O’Connell

 
for what reason then?

Well he built the Jodi stand, he is the honorary life president, played for the club, and he stuck around. Tony will be here tonight, and Tony, in those years we were stuck for money, the first person up to write a check or to try to get people together was Tony. And that’s a man in his late seventies. So fair play to him.

so tonight’s game then, st pats, shud be a good game, their real pressing teams

Id say both teams to score

a draw maybe

I think so, one all, or two all either way, pats usually come to Dalymount looking to not concede first so they can’t do that tonight, and our home form has been atrocious, so I think both teams will score and then 2-1, two all or one all.

any players to look out for tonight that maybe general fans wouldn’t know about, under the radar

For us, Fuad, I mean Fuad will be going to England by the looks of things, he is a phenomenon player, he came from Pats under 19’s

definitely then going to score tonight so!

I think he is our best player

its worth a fiver

And of course, wardy after the hat trick up in Drogheda.

and the atmosphere tonight, what should we expect?

The atmosphere will be good. Dalymount is difficult in that , you know we are fully aware that the ground has two sides realistically, so you are creating noise on two sides which isn’t ideal, but Bohs n Pats its one of the better atmospheres, I think you will be pleasantly surprised, obviously us and rovers isn’t comparable to any other game we play, so this ranks up there with one of the better atmospheres

is it difficult to get punters in all the time?

Not anymore no, we turned a huge corner, that the perception of bohs, and its something we have worked on very hard, the perception of bohs has changed massively, when you go in there tonight, you will see there will be quite a lot of tourists, quite a lot of girls, and the kind of demographic at bohs games has shifted quite a lot in the last few years. we haven’t lost anyone, we have just added on a new group of people.

I see you are linking up with other teams as well, you have FC United…

Fc United, we have good links with st pauli in hamburg

really, wow

yeah its something we have really tried to press home

will there be a sparkling of German and……

yeah you will see it here, there will be german, French, Spanish, they will be drinking the bohs craft ale, there will be hipsters everywhere

you have three bars

So The one in the middle is the members bar, generally older demographic in there, mainly bohs members, the bar on the far left is the phoenix walking in that’s generally our singing section, there is a jukebox in there, lots of pictures of past gigs in Dalymount, the one on the far right isn’t open to the public that’s our sponsors bar, it opens up after the game.

will I see Johnny Logan tonight?

You might!

brush shiels?

You will see brush shiels,
You will see, who else will be here….
James Kavanagh is coming tonight, im picking james up in the jeep, you know james kavanagh, the snap chat celebrity

No, sorry

John Kavanaghs brother, McGregor’s coach. So james is coming to tonight and he is snapchatting the whole night

im just after realising the name of the bar (café)…..bang bang , you were in the news recently…

Yeah we got a gravestone made for bang bang, on rte news

bang bang?

Used to shoot a key around Dublin

it was only recently, what 2 or 3 weeks

2 weeks ago
I know you cant see this now obviously as we are speaking, but the idea behind this and its something we have tried to say to other clubs, happening more and more is with this picture obviously its red and black but beside that its everything you wouldn’t expect to see on a football poster, no crest, no footballer, and there is a woman in it and that’s done on purpose as very often the FAI try to market the league and they miss the point, they put up a player in a jersey and a kit, that only appeals to existing fans….
But you see this, first of all you are thinking what’s it about……..but it kind of draws you in….

questions, questions

Yeah and that’s something we have tried to bring across all our engagements with the public…

so what about shamrock rovers then? Ha ha 

In what way

you get excited when they come this side of the city

yeah both of us do, like…..there are some good things going on about shamrock rovers, I think they miss the point in that we try to celebrate the fact that what they did in terms of a club is getting themselves a ground and coming out from that period of absolute madness that they were in, should be commended as a club. Id have nothing against them as a football club
When we play them I want to beat them, do I like them…..no I don’t.
But I do think for us, been able to stay in Dalymount is massive.
Tallaght is a nice stadium, but there is no soul to it, it’s a sterile place, its on the periphery of the city

its very windy, jesus right up the middle

I don’t like it. I met a guy here recently and he was a Spanish fella and he had come over, and he came to see us and rover in Dalymount, and he arrived on the Thursday and he got a Dublin bike and cycled out to Tallaght stadium to see it, and he said “I had left the city”

so what’s this place you have going on here the, it seems like a pretty cool place

It… what do we do,,,, we do food, records and clothes and coffee and

are you long open here?

Nearly two years

yeah, seems pretty busy, buzzing in there

A lot of it is football stuff. Me and my sister did it, her rule at the start was no politics, no football, so ….its full of bohs stuff…. And I climbed on top of that building last week and put a Palestinian flag on top last week

So that’s pretty much it, thanks very much …..and a prediction for tonight 

Id go 2-1 bohs

And who is going to score the last goal

Dinny, to score

Dinny Corcoran, thanks very much

Anyway, here is my day out in video form

 Full article here

Bohemians, football away days

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