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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Interview with an expert

Some questions that I posted to Ro at FOOTEE TALLAGHT about the burgeoning foot-golf scene in Ireland

1: Where did the idea come from, to bring footgolf to Tallaght and to Ireland?

I returned to education in 2012, embarking on a postgrad in Innovation, Entrepreneurship & Enterprise at the Innovation Academy, UCD. One of my deliverables for the course was to bring a viable new business proposition to the Irish market. I had seen FootGolf a coupe of years previously and loved the concept, believed it would be very popular in Ireland with our keen interest in sport, and the timing was just right as golf courses were facing closure around the country in the midst of recession.

2:Can it grow as a sport in Ireland/World wide? What are the participation levels so far in the game? 

Since I opened the first course in Ireland in 2013, there are now 30+ courses dotted throughout the country, some excellent, and some incredibly poor representations of the concept. From a leisure point of view, the sport is thriving in Ireland as one of the leading birthday party/stag activities. The Irish FootGolf Association (which I founded in 2014) estimates that over 80,000 people play FootGolf annually.

In terms of FootGolf as a sport worldwide, it’s getting there (albeit slowly). Participation on a competitive level is increasing in some countries (UK, France in particular), but unfortunately here in Ireland it has been a real slow burner. We average only between 20 – 25 players in domestic tournaments this year. Our flagship event – The FootGolf Irish Open – has always faired way better with over 130 participants at each of our last two events.

3: I found footgolf has its own unique challenges (not thinking to kick as a straight football pass, for example)……how can a novice get better, any tips on how to improve my game…..

Just like golf, putting is key. Anyone with even a passing interest in FootGolf tends to be able to strike a ball well, but it really comes down to short approach shots and getting the ball in the hole. Best tip I can give to any budding FootGolfer would be to practice all types of putts from within 10 yards. If you can master those tricky, missable short putts, you’re off to a good start.

4: Reaction from the golfing fraternity? (as footgolf does sometimes share greens, courses)

Generally negative, as golfers don’t like sharing their fairways or clubhouses with the “hooligans”, lol. Shameful reactions at some courses trying out FootGolf to help boost revenues, where the golfers have got their way in the end and forced clubs to reconsider. 

5: The future of the game? Tournaments? Professional players? World cups? TV?

All of the above. It won’t happen overnight but steps have already been taken to have FootGolf recognised as an official sport by the World Sport Accord.

FOOTEE TALLAGHT is Ireland’s Original & Best FootGolf Course! Situated in Tallaght just off the M50, footee is for people of all ages and fitness levels, males and females, young and old. Don’t worry about bringing your own football as you can always rent one for €2.

Get Outdoors. Get Active. Get Your Kicks.

www.footee.ie

Full article here

ThisDrinkingLife’s Guide to FootGolf

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