Bohs of summer

Heartiest congratulations are due to Bohemians after their efficient 3-0 dismissal of Belarussian champions BATE Borisov in last week’s Champions League preliminary round encounter at Dalymount Park, complete with the obligatory goal from Glen Crowe.

Bohs, of course, will hardly be advancing to the group stage of this competition, so there is a mild sense of futility about their endeavours at this embryonic stage of the proceedings. I’m told that the Champions League music (Georg Handel’s ‘Zadok The Priest’) was played over the tannoy as the two teams walked out onto the pitch, merely serving to heighten the sense of the lucrative group stages as some sort of tantalising mirage far off on the horizon.

But the win will do more than merely give Bohs’ league form a fillip as they attempt to pull themselves up by their bootstraps from their current miserable position of eighth. It set up a half-decent little payday in the shape of a first leg at home to Rosenborg (played last night at Dalymount), and it gives them another scalp to add to their quietly impressive tally that, in recent seasons, includes Aberdeen, Kaiserslautern (albeit only a 1-0 away win when the tie was beyond salvaging) and, eh, Levadia Määrdu of Estonia.

There is, however, zero prospect of negotiating the Rosenborg hurdle and squaring up to the fearsome Deportívo La Coruña in the third round, a state of affairs for which Bohemians’ players, though not their club treasurer, can probably be grateful.

I may as well hold up my hands at this stage and admit that the only time I attend fixtures involving Eircom League teams is if their opponents are of the continental and thusly rather moe interesting variety. In recent seasons I have turned up at games involving Bohs, Shelbourne and Shamrock Rovers against opponents ranging from well-drilled Swedes to deceptively languid Macedonians.

That’s how I found myself standing on the terraces of Dalyer seven years ago, watching a Dynamo Minsk player rifle in one of the best goals I have ever seen, an awesome volley from almost halfway down the pitch, scored at the end that Bohs fans refer to as “The Jodi”. (Bohs had gone ahead in the first minute, a goal I missed as I was still scrabbling around for my ticket at the turnstile.)

The following summer, I watched Bohs again, this time against Ferencváros of Hungary. In typical style, they had the white-shirted Magyars under their thumbs for most of the evening, then missed a late penalty and ended up losing 1-0.

This sort of suicidal behaviour, throwing it away when all seems won, is a trait particular to Irish clubs in Europe. I particularly remember Shels and Bohs doing their best to squander away victories in successive seasons: Shels went off to Macedonia three years ago, scraped a 1-0 win, then spent the home leg doing their level best to eliminate themselves. They didn’t quite manage it because their keeper Steve Williams hadn’t read the script and pulled off about four world-class saves.

In similar fashion, Bohs administered a famous 2-1 trouncing to Aberdeen at Pittodrie two years ago. Back at Dalymount Park a fortnight later, they threw Ebbe Skovdahl’s dreadfully inept side a lifebuoy by scoring a bizarre own goal near the end, and were forced to play out the final minutes in increasingly desperate and bad-tempered fashion.

So the BATE Borisov win must be viewed in a certain context – through a prism of piss-awfulness, if you will. It is merely a pleasant interlude, and the way Bohs played in this competition last year, hockeying Levadia Maardu and then bowing out tamely against Halmstads of Sweden, gives no indication that they would have turned in anything other than the usual gallant huffing and puffing against Rosenborg in last night’s game (played, obviously, well after we went to press).

But of course I dragged myself along to it. Sure, what else would you be doing during the off-season summer months? Actually, don’t answer that.