"I've been a Bohs fan all my life so it's an honour to be able to say I pulled on the shirt in Europe. When you're a kid kicking a ball around the park, you imagine you're playing at the highest level - and that's in Europe."
Though their senior team may have been absent from European competition for eight years, Thursday's Europa League qualifying game against Hungarian side Fehérvár is not Bohemians' first trip to the continent since 2012 and nor was that quote from a Bohemians player.
It came from a man who has turned his life around with the help of the club's community outreach foundation. The Bohemian Foundation helps to rehabilitate prisoners in Mountjoy Prison through sport and to assist in their reintegration to society and this man, Jake (not his real name), is one of the people they have helped.
For club president Chris Brien it reaffirms why Bohemians were right to shift their attention to being a community club
He is referring to when a team of former prisoners, and the volunteers who helped them turn their lives around, went to the Netherlands in 2017 and won a rather unique European tournament.
They were representing Ireland at Euro Football Norgerhaven, a seven-a-side tournament that took place at an open prison in the Dutch village of Veenhuizen. Clubs from Belgium, Germany, the UK and the Netherlands also sent representative teams made up of former prisoners.
"We stayed in an army camp just outside the town and then when we got to Norgerhaven it was like going into a supermax prison," Bohemian Foundation board member and volunteer Jeff Conway explains.
Conway recalls there were numerous sets of gates, holding pens and bag checks before gaining entry to the prison.
“Once we got in there though the set up was great, the organisers made sure everything was catered for. It was up there with anything I’ve experienced in the top youth tournaments growing up,” said Conway.
Despite having the smallest squad in the tournament, it seemed to benefit the Bohemian Foundation more than it hindered them. Each player knew when their teammates were going to make a run, or pass the ball and more importantly when they should sit back and defend.
On their path to the final, they won all their group games and knocked out Schalke in the semi-final - a feat any Irish team would be proud to have achieved.
This telepathic link the players had was developed on the concrete training yard in Mountjoy where they would practice each week with coaching from Bohs players. The Bohemian Foundation had just one condition the team had to follow: reoffend and you’re out.
“The whole team was just buzzing,” Jake says. “I felt like I was a professional footballer, there were proper referees and some ex-pros too. Every game was tough but we knew we had the quality to win it.”
Despite being located in the Netherlands, all the inmates in Norgerhaven are Norwegian due to the Dutch prison system having an “undercrowding crisis.” As such, the Bohemian Foundation faced the Norwegian home team in the final.
“The crowd were mostly the Norwegian prisoners so we felt like it was a hostile atmosphere, they didn’t want us to win at all,” Conway says chuckling. “Jake got the goal, we won 1-0 and he finished top scorer. To see how far all those lads had come to get to that moment, I can’t quite describe it but it was a special feeling for all the volunteers.”
Since winning the cup in 2017, the Foundation has used their continental success as evidence to show the inmates they still help that their approach to rehabilitation works.
The team has returned to Mountjoy regularly, but not because they have reoffended. They go back as a positive example for the men still behind bars, that they too are capable of turning their lives around.
"I think because it's football is why it works," says Bohemian Foundation president, Thomas Hynes. "Football is the great equaliser. You can have a millionaire playing against a homeless guy and it's irrelevant.
“Some of these guys never learned to express their emotions in healthy ways but the thing is, is that they can learn to express themselves with football. It’s teaching them without them feeling like they’re being lectured to,” Hynes said.
Bringing the outside world inside the prison walls is the Bohemian Foundation’s way of destigmatising the conversation around prison. Hynes explains that the men they work with become more open to accepting further forms of help as a result of this - a point supported by academics.
"Recent research shows that enabling people in custody to play football and other team sports in prisons can have a number of benefits, particularly for mental health and wellbeing," Maynooth University criminology lecturer, Dr Ian Marder, outlined.
“Participation in sports can also act as a pathway to engaging in education when coaching, sports sciences and other relevant qualifications are made available.”
For club president Chris Brien it reaffirms why Bohemians were right to shift their attention to being a community club, rather than one that focuses entirely on its first team.
Me and Donnacha weren't best mates inside, let's say. But over there I saw a different side of him and realised he's a normal man
“We’re a club in every sense of the word now and I feel it’s brought us to the position we’re in now. I think this shows what we’re all about: a club that’s open to all and wants to help you reach your potential,” said Brien.
With Covid-19 halting proceedings for now, the deputy governor of Mountjoy prison, Donnacha Walsh, says the inmates currently try to continue their training as best they can until a return to normality.
Perhaps the most significant achievement of the trip to Norgerhaven was two former adversaries putting past differences behind them. Walsh was also part of the travelling group and didn’t have the best relationship with Jake while he was in Mountjoy.
“We had a laugh on the plane over. I was telling him to be quiet and he just laughed saying ‘you’re not the boss out here, Donnacha.’
“When the team won I noticed Jake went straight for the phone to call his mother to tell her they had won and a few of the lads gave their boots to some of the Norwegian prisoners. It’s those little sparks that show how far people can come,” Walsh said.
“Me and Donnacha weren’t best mates inside, let’s say. But over there I saw a different side of him and realised he’s a normal man just doing his job on the inside,” Jake says.
For Jake and the team though, they have no doubt this trip was a turning point in their lives.
