“I want to see the day when we’re playing at the new Dalymount with a home-grown successful team. If that happens, I can retire happily to Cabra!”

Alan Caffrey and Ireland U15 international Jamie Mullins – Stephen Burke

Alan Caffrey is driven by a vision that sees a Bohemians team populated by home-grown talent winning trophies at a rebuilt Dalymount Park.

“If that happens,” he says, “then I can retire happily to Cabra!”

Caffrey grew up under the glow of the Dalymount floodlights that have illuminated generations of footballing greats but Caffrey himself has earned quite the reputation for shining a light on potential stars of the future.

‘Caffo’ has been coaching with St Kevin’s Boys for more than a decade and has overseen all their youth teams since being appointed Head of Youth Development in 2012.

Some of Irish football’s recent success stories internationally and domestically have come through at St Kevin’s during his time at the club, most notably Euro 2016 heroes Robbie Brady and Jeff Hendrick.

So it is perhaps a natural progression of the Bohs-SKB partnership that he is now also taking up the role of Technical Director, working closely with Bohemians first-team gaffer Keith Long and all underage managers.

Caffrey oversees the Bohs-SKB partnership League of Ireland teams at U13, U15 and U17 level with the goal of progressing players from the academy teams through to the Bohemians U19s and through to senior football.

It is not reinventing the wheel: Caffrey has already played a significant role in spotting young emerging talent and bringing them through but also in helping Long entice former Kevin’s men coming back from the UK to sign for Bohs. Those returning stars include Darragh Leahy, Danny Mandroiu, Robbie McCourt and Luke Wade-Slater and previously Eoghan Stokes.

Ex-Kevin’s Boys reunited at Bohs – Darragh Leahy, Luke Wade-Slater, Robbie McCourt and Danny Mandroiu – Fran Veale

He smiles: “Any first-team manager has to sell players his vision and thankfully Keith is very good at that but the odd phone call and text from me, telling them not to go anywhere else, doesn’t hurt.

“We’ve built a relationship with these players over many years, even when they’ve gone away. You’re not just contacting them four years later going ‘oh yeah by the way will you sign for Bohs?’ You need to build and maintain relationships in football.

“I love sitting in Dalymount and hearing people say ‘what a player he is’ about someone you’ve worked with. All these guys are proper players too. They want to get on the ball, play the right way and they want to win.

“There is great satisfaction in seeing players continuing to the highest level they can. To see a Dan Mandroiu, a Luke Wade-Slater, a Darragh Leahy – all of those lads – if you look at them, they’re all talented players in their early 20s with bright futures and I’m proud that I have had the joy of working with them coming through.”

Caffrey credits Bohs Youth Development Officer Pat Cleary as a mentor and the man who gave him the grá for coaching and nurturing young talent in the first place.

After hanging up his boots, having played for Dingle United in Cabra and Home Farm, Caffrey was initially a reluctant coach, admitting: “Pat suggested I get into coaching, which I kind of laughed at to be honest. I had known Pat from his football course on Mountjoy Square (precursor to current ETB courses) and I’d just finished playing.

“By that stage, Pat was head coach at St Kevin’s. He asked me to come down. Being a Home Farm person, I wasn’t in a hurry to go to St Kevin’s! But Pat being Pat, he got me up to a few training sessions where I was a player in the sessions more than a coach.

“That’s where the coaching bug started. Under Pat’s guidance, I started to get into the coaching with players, working with the likes of Ronan Finn, Karl Moore… that age group.”

Through Cleary, Caffrey moved to West Brom where he was an academy coach for three years. But the duo’s careers have continued to overlap and intertwine in the past two decades.

Indeed, they were both on the first-team coaching staff at Bohemians in 2006 and were put in caretaker charge for the final 10 games of the season following the resignation of Gareth Farrelly.

Alan Caffrey in caretaker charge of Bohemians in 2006 – Sportsfile

Caffrey said: “Gareth was here when I was at West Brom. I had got to the stage where I wanted to come home and coach young players at home. Gareth said ‘why don’t you come back to Bohs, you supported them, why don’t you come back?’

“It was first team whereas my experience was schoolboy football, so I wasn’t sure about it but it was a great opportunity so I took it. Not many people were backing me coming back. People were saying I was crazy leaving a Premier League club to come back here. Then he left about a month later!

“I wasn’t aware of the atmosphere at the club at the time, having been away. But I look at it as a brilliant experience that I learned from.

“I remember then sitting in the dressing room when Gareth was talking to the players telling them he was resigning and I was thinking ‘oh my God, what have I done?’

“It was Pat Cleary again who settled me. We got a phone call to take the first game. We were only supposed to be there for one game but we ended up staying until the end of the season.”

Caffrey remained on the coaching team for the following season when Seán Connor took charge. He name-checks Glen Crowe, Owen Heary and Neale Fenn as professionals he loved working with but, ultimately, like most Bohemians, looks back on that season as being a regrettable experience and one that “probably put me off working in senior football again”.

That statement is being challenged now as his involvement with Long and the first-team management continues to prosper. But he is a man on a mission.

When Cleary, also part of the legendary Billy Young’s coaching team in the 1980s, returned to work for the club in December, he said that he felt like he was “coming home”.

Listening to Caffrey, there is a similar sense of belonging.

Pat Cleary, third from right, with the legendary Billy Young in 1987

He said: “Conor Emerson’s (Bohemians Youth Director) decision to bring Pat back to Bohs could be the signing of the season. I spoke to Pat at the time about how Bohs were a differently-run club to the one we were at 13 years ago.

“The outlook has changed totally. Everything back then was purely driven towards the first team and a hell of a lot of money was being spent on that. A lot of other clubs were doing that then as well of course but I don’t think that’s how things should be done. There are good people overseeing Bohs’ youth structures now. I told him to trust me on that as I’d been in about 40 meetings with them!

“Bohs genuinely want to bring kids through. It’s not just first-team driven. There is a structure in place to develop talent and if both clubs get things right, the long-term future is very bright. I meet with Pat every week and we’re on the phone all the time. We both want 10-, 11-, 12-year-olds who are playing at Bohemians and St Kevin’s now to go on and play for the first team.”

Eighteen months into the partnership, he believes the budding relationship between the clubs is yielding results off the field too.

He said: “Bohs youth-team players and Kevin’s players want to come to watch the Bohs first team. That’s how I fell in love with the club – going as a kid. Now I get requests every weekend from people at Kevin’s looking for tickets and I know it’s the same with Conor and the Bohs youth players. They all feel part of the club.

“We never had that link at Kevin’s before with a senior team. We couldn’t have given tickets away before! Now we have that. People are getting an affinity to the club from a young age. It leads on from there. Kevin’s managers and coaches are going to the games. They enjoy it. They have an affinity with the players already and people are bonding, as I was always confident they would.”

While Caffrey may have been confident, there were those who believed two well-established institutions would struggle to work together. Indeed, after several meetings came to a standstill, many at both clubs seemed to believe that to be the case too.

Bohs Youth Director Conor Emerson and Youth Development Officer Pat Cleary

With the new League of Ireland structures already in place at U19 and U17 level, schoolboy clubs were encouraged to form links with League of Ireland clubs before the inaugural U15 league in 2017.

Having been unable to come to agreement, St Kevin’s were initially permitted to compete in the U15s league in their own right. But that was a temporary arrangement and both clubs sat down, knocked heads together and worked on establishing a mutually-beneficial partnership.

Instead of focusing on perceived differences, Caffrey points to the similarities between the clubs as to how the positive start to the partnership can continue to flourish.

He said: “The two clubs are similar in many ways. The majority of people are all volunteers. They work unbelievably hard to make their club the best it can be. Both clubs provide a platform for football – not only for the best players – but for players who just want to play for the love of the game. Both clubs have contributed to kids going on to be good people.

“Bringing those things together, they are the values of the two clubs to focus on. I always felt Bohs were the right club to work with. We felt that there was something here we could be a part of and contribute to. Ken Donohoe (St Kevin’s Director of Football) had a feel for Bohs and I’ve grown up with Bohs.

“There were a lot of meetings but for one reason or another, we couldn’t come together at first. We ended up meeting nearly everyone else in the league! But thankfully we eventually got back to Bohs. Keith Long played a massive role. There were probably 20 meetings between the two boards. There were times in Dalymount I was in the car park nearly crying! But right from the start, Keith could see it.

“If you look at Keith’s playing and coaching background, he has played at big clubs. He’s gone to England, he’s coached at schoolboy level with Joey’s and he obviously knows the history of St Kevin’s. Him buying into it got the link-up over the line but now that the partnership is in place, him buying into it even further in terms of actually giving young players a chance is massive and will stand to us.

“When two big clubs come together, it takes time to build a relationship. Whether it’s the order of the two crests, the colours, the order of the names, there are always going to be things to iron out. When I say ‘Bohs-SKB’ someone might not like it but if I say ‘SKB-Bohs’ someone else might jump on it. That’s natural. It is two big clubs with proud traditions.”

He laughs: “There were probably people at Bohs looking at me thinking ‘ah he’s a Kevin’s fella’ but then you’ve people at Kevin’s thinking ‘ah he’s only out for Bohs’ so I’m used to being stuck in the middle and I’m fine with that.

“I love Kevin’s and I love working there. But I love Bohs and I’ve never hidden away from that. Ultimately I want to see the day when we’re playing at the new Dalymount with a home-grown successful team. If that happens, I can retire happily to Cabra!”

Ross Tierney and Danny Mandroiu then and now – goalscorers in recent EA Sports Cup win against Cork City

“The most important thing I’ve learned from clubs is you have to have a good structure in people running the club and they have to leave you time and space to implement your vision. You obviously have to justify yourself to the people running the club and rightly so. There are great people running both clubs. At Kevin’s, I’ve had great backing from Ken Donohoe.

“We’ve had Barcelona, Ajax, Real Madrid all in Shanowen – the biggest clubs in the world have come to Dublin because of what we do. We won a lot of leagues and trophies but it’s not all about that. We have players of every ability and age playing for us.

“With the partnership teams, we all have a shared goal. There are two boards, two sets of colours, two names, but we all want to see a successful youth sections at St Kevin’s and Bohemians. That means then when it comes to picking players for our League of Ireland teams, rather than 20 good players to pick from, I want 40 good players to pick from. You want a proper headache.”

That aim was already evident at Bohs under Long prior to the link-up. Indeed, some of the quality coming through has already given him plenty of headaches.

The Bohs U19s have won the league the past two seasons, qualifying for the Uefa Youth League in the process, and have produced first-team players Warren O’Hora, Andy Lyons, Paddy Kirk, Daniel Grant and Ali Reghba.

With the added firepower of St Kevin’s, now the likes of Ryan Graydon, Ross Tierney and Dawson Devoy are in the mix too having come through the academy teams. They have all tasted first-team action this term.

Caffrey said: “Our job here is to look after the players as best as possible. The best players, whether they are playing for the first team or youth teams, might want to go abroad and that’s okay.

“But we have a player in our U19s who was offered a contract by a Premier League Club. He said no. He said to me he didn’t want to go. He said he wanted to stay and play for Bohs.

“Now there is another player who plays for our U17s who does want to go. All players are different. But one felt enough at home that he didn’t want to leave for a Premier League club.

“Some might go away but if we have looked after them, they will come back to us. The likes of Mandroiu and Leahy coming back, they came back to people they feel associated with.

“Players have different personalities, different sets of circumstances. The lads who have come home are often tarnished with ‘ah they’ve all come back from England’.

“It’s not as simple as that. They all have different reasons. They’re talented footballers. They’re starting to show that. Some adapt and show it sooner than others.”

Caffo coaches Bohs-SKB U13s – Stephen Burke

Having tried the full-time model and come close to bankruptcy in the process, Bohemians are committed to remaining part-time.

That has its strengths but also presents the club with challenges as to how to maximise its potential and retain players who might have their heads turned at the prospect of full-time football.

That is something neither the club’s board nor management team shies away from and both know providing education and suitable education pathways are required for the club to kick on further.

Caffrey said: “Some boys want to play full-time football and go abroad. If there are choices here where we can offer players two-year scholarships, then they have something to think about.

“We need scholarships in place, we need link-ups with third-level institutions, we need career opportunities in place.

“You’re not going to become a millionaire playing League of Ireland football so we have got to make sure that while they are with us, they are looked after as well as possible.

“Our players want to win but people have to understand that if they have jobs, they’ve got to get up early for their job, train, play Monday, play Friday, that’s not easy.

“I’ve heard people say Bohs are more or less full-time because they train nearly every night.

“Yeah, they do but it is a totally different ball game from players who train and don’t have to work in between training day to day… the stress of trying to get out from work to training at 6 o’clock.

“We have to strike a balance for players – get them into the right jobs and the right employers who understand the pressures of being a footballer at this level.

“If we get that right, then we could really be on to something special.”

By Luke O’Riordan

luke@bohemians.ie