Any football club’s anthem tends to have fairly unique origins. Liverpool fans began singing You’ll Never Walk Alone in the ‘60 after local band Gerry and the Pacemakers took a cover of the Rodgers and Hammerstein song to number one in the charts and the DJ at Anfield started playing it.
Leeds’ Marching On Together was originally the B-side of their 1972 FA Cup final single but while the A-side, simply called Leeds United, has long since faded into obscurity, the flip-side is still sung loud and proud at Elland Road over 50 years later.
But for Bohs and Hold Me Now it was all down to one man, the late, great Ger Byrne who sadly passed away last week.
I first met Ger back in 1998. Having been a regular attendee at Dalymount in the early nineties, I’d lapsed a bit from a combination of weekends spent DJing and clubbing plus a working holiday visa to Australia. My return was sparked by Adrian Byrne (no relation), a work colleague who was also a huge Bohs fan. Through heading to matches with him I was introduced into a wide circle of friends who would become my regular match-going crew and some of my best mates to this day. Amongst them were three brothers, Colin, Philip and Ger.
The Byrnes were legendary for their passion for the club. And Ger was probably the most fanatical of them all. Stories such as how he hadn’t missed a Bohs game in Leinster including friendlies for the past five years abounded as did tales of his sense of humour and quick wit. You were always guaranteed a laugh when Ger would arrive with his bag full of the day’s newspapers to ensure he missed none of the Bohs news. Our friendship was cemented in the Roddy Collins era with my attendance at the away leg of the Uefa Cup tie against Aberdeen securing my seal of approval from the lads.
Sing-songs on the buses to away games were always lively with a mixture of terrace chants, ‘60 songs and more recent hits from the likes of The Stone Roses and Oasis all getting an airing. But when it came to Ger’s turn you’d be treated to some pure cheese such as Copacabana by Barry Manilow. Or Hold Me Now by Johnny Logan.
A Golden Era for Bohs
We soldiered together through what’s still the greatest season in the club’s history, the double win of 2000/01. A season of so many highs from European wins against Aberdeen and Kaiserslautern to the 6-4 comeback win against Shamrock Rovers in the Santry Siro massacre to the 1-0 win over the same opposition in the FAI Cup semi-final. But it was all capped by the run to snatch the league title from under Shelbourne’s noses after the season had restarted following the foot-and-mouth interruption.
The 5-0 win to clinch it down in Kilkenny while Cork did us a favour by beating Shels was one of the great days. When we added the FAI Cup against Stephen Kenny’s Longford the following week we had another to add to the annals. The celebrations in the marquee at Dalymount with Ger and the gang live long in the memory.
Internal club politics saw Collins depart the week after the cup final but there were more European trips to come with a five-day trip to Estonia for a tie against Levadia Maardu testing the strongest of constitutions. But results weren’t coming the way of Collins’ successor Pete Mahon and when Stephen Kenny took over in December 2001 it felt like a new era was starting. And it was in that era that the club anthem was born.
The Birth of an Anthem
Having steadied the ship in the 2001/02 season and after narrowly missing out on the retention of the FAI Cup in a 2-1 defeat to Dundalk, the 2002/03 season saw Bohs regain the league title and with it qualification to the preliminary rounds of the Champions League.
A first-round win over Belarusian champions BATE Borisov meant a second-round tie against group-stage regulars Rosenborg, who had counted AC Milan, Juventus and Borussia Dortmund amongst their recent scalps. It also meant another trip on the road as we booked ourselves onto the flight the club was chartering to Norway.
Upon landing on the ground in Trondheim we split up into groups with the mission being to find a bar owner who would offer a discounted rate on what was very expensive local beer for a guarantee of the custom of a few hundred thirsty football fans. Mobile calls were bounced back and forth between the groups as we bargained prices down. “Yer man up the road is offering us pints for €6, can you beat that?”. If memory serves we eventually got a price of €5.50 agreed and set up base camp in a bar on the main city square for the next couple of days.
Gameday duly arrived and we gathered in a section of tables outside the pub for the usual pre-game craic. It wasn’t long before the singing started, earning a few amused looks from the locals going about their daily business. Soon enough it came to Ger’s turn and off he launched into Hold Me Now.
He hadn’t even finished the song when one local came over to us beaming a smile and saying, “Ah yes! Johnny Logan, three-time Eurovision winner!” This caused no end of mirth and the song got numerous more outings on the way to the ground and inside the stadium as the team capitulated to a 4-0 hammering although it was a game none of us expected to win.
We flew home straight after the game but the singing continued on the plane. I recall Ger duetting a version of Summer Lovin’ with one of the air hostesses when he insisted he’d only do it if he could sing the Olivia Newton John lines! But it was Hold Me Now that dominated the flight with the players now joining in and it didn’t stop at the next home game. And it hasn’t stopped since.
RTE got wind of it and invited a bemused Johnny Logan onto the Joe Duffy show to talk about it. From then on, Johnny has made multiple appearances at the club including memorable turns at club legend Kevin Hunt’s testimonial and at various fundraisers when the club’s finances sailed close to bankruptcy in the early 2010s. Following Ger’s untimely passing last week a video did the rounds on WhatsApp of Johnny under the Jodi Stand in Dalymount with his guitar saying; “Hi Ger, I believe you’re responsible for all this” before blasting out the chorus.
A Lasting Legacy
There was a lot more to Ger than just the song, however. A beloved son, brother, uncle and friend, his passing has been felt far beyond the footprint of Dalymount Park. But it’s a fitting legacy that his memory will live on the terraces in Phibsborough every time his song is sung.
From my perspective, I’ll just miss his smile and fist bump whenever we met and his legendary rants in person and online when things went wrong on the pitch. And that’s happened more often than any of us would like over the years.
But no matter how bad things got there was always a laugh to be had about it when Ger was around. I’ll miss him terribly. Goodbye buddy and RIP. What do you say when words are not enough?
