It is with great sadness that Bohemian FC confirms that Billy Young, our longest-serving and greatest-ever manager, passed away yesterday at the age of 87.
As both a player and manager, Billy’s service to Bohemians spanned three decades, representing our club with love, passion and determination.
In his 16-year reign as manager between 1973 and 1989, he brought unprecedented success to Dalymount Park, winning two league titles, an FAI Cup and the League Cup twice.
He led the club he loved on magical European nights, most notably the famous 3-2 win over Glasgow Rangers in 1984.
In his later years, he remained an avid follower of his club, offering guidance and inspiration to many of his successors.
Along with members of his family, who are all in our thoughts today, he remained a regular attendee at Dalymount up to and including this season.
To all of the Young family, Billy’s many friends, former team-mates and protégés, everyone at Bohemian FC extends our deepest sympathies and condolences on the passing of the best of Bohemians.
Further tributes will follow. In the meantime, we today reproduce the last interview Billy gave to the Bohemians matchday programme, which first appeared in 2018.
RIP Billy
- Billy’s funeral arrangements can be read here.
- We encourage all Bohemians to sign Billy’s book of condolences here.
An interview by Tony Magner with former Bohemians player and manager Billy Young, first published in the matchday programme in 2018
Billy Young remains the longest serving manager of Bohemian Football Club having taken charge in 1973 and presided over a period of unprecedented success all the way up until his departure in 1989. Previous to that he had seven years, 1962-1969, as a player earning a reputation as a tenacious and tough-tackling full-back or centre-half.
He is still a regular here in Dalymount thankfully and, though 80 years of age, is sprightly and energetic, especially when it comes to talking football and Bohs in general. Although many of you reading this may be too young to remember Billy as a manager here and even more so as a player, his status is legendary. That word is bandied about too easily these days but Billy truly is a Bohemian legend and was fittingly inducted into the club’s Hall of Fame in November 2007. A winner of two league titles as manager in 1975 and 1978, one FAI Cup in 1976, the League Cup in 1975 and 1979, as well as numerous Leinster and President’s Cups, Billy is remembered even more fondly for being at the helm on the famous night in 1984 when Glasgow Rangers were beaten 3-2 at Dalymount in the UEFA Cup. Despite never having the funds to compete with some of our more financially well endowed neighbours, Billy built team after team that competed for honours against all the odds, perennially stripped of his best players by the lure of big wages elsewhere and operating on a shoe-string budget, making an art of discovering players from schoolboy football. People like Billy don’t grow on trees and there will not be his like again I’m sure.
Rover and out…
As a player he came late to the League of Ireland only joining Bohs when he was 24 in 1962. Billy started out in a club called Bru Padraig in Mount Street for two years before moving to Castleville from Ringsend. He won a couple of leagues at underage level but the club didn’t have a youth team and he had offers from Home Farm, St Patrick’s Athletic and Shamrock Rovers. “I went to Rovers,” he says with a grin. “I don’t know why but the great Paddy Coad made a huge impression on me. Without being bullying or loud he just did it on the pitch and inspired huge respect. I was going to the Tech at the time and couldn’t train with the youth team so Paddy asked me to go up and train with the first team instead. He would have a match at the end of his training session where he would put out the team who was going to play on the Sunday against whoever was left. I was always one of the whoevers! He used to ask me to mark someone and kick lumps out of them, ‘Stick with him no matter what,’ he says. ‘If he tells you to buzz off just get tighter on him. That’s the way he is going to be marked on the Sunday you see.’ So Paddy wanted me to dish it out! It was a great learning curve for me. I remember the first team with the likes of Liam Tuohy used to go down to O’Connell Street every Thursday for a Knickerbocker Glory in Cufolas. That was their treat, their bonding, and if you didn’t go they’d be highly disgusted. Rovers had a smashing youth team at the time with the likes of Andy McEvoy and Bobby Gilbert. I played for the B Team a few times but didn’t stay the whole season as a fella called Charlie Downey came in for me and asked me to join Richmond Rangers.”
Tied Up In Bohs…
Richmond won the youth division as Billy continued his footballing education and from there he joined Markievicz Celtic, winning the U-21 league and a few cups. “I played for the senior team in the Leinster Senior League and I was doing well. We had a good team and League of Ireland clubs were looking at us. A man named Andy Kettle knocked on my door one day and asked me to go up to Bohemians. I knew nothing about him then, what a good talent scout he was. Coming to Dalymount Park was a real eye-opener to me. George Lax was the coach, he was called that because he didn’t pick the team! That was done by a committee. George used to tell us to run around as far and as fast as you can, take a breather, then see if you can go further or faster! And that was it! It was so simple back then.”
Even then Billy showed glimpses of the aptitude he has for coaching and the leadership qualities that were to emerge so clearly as he became a regular in the team under Lax and later Sean Thomas. “I started to get them a bit more organised before training sessions were due to start and there were as many getting involved in my sessions as George’s! He used to come out and have a look at us and shout ‘Yiz are looking well!’ and disappear again. He was a lovely man, George, he really was, but in terms of coaching I learned what not to do from him! In hindsight, I can see now that even then I was getting the coaching bug a bit. Another thing I remember about George was that we used to have team meetings and first of all there would be a few bottles of Guinness. The lads used to arrive early and scoff the Guinness before George arrived and he’d be left scratching the head.”
Bohs in The Rare Aul Times…
Soon Billy began to settle, coming to the fore as a first team player and settling into the club where he was to spend the rest of his career. “Yes, I had great times at the club in those years, there was such great camaraderie. We used to have to go down and get Willie Browne out of bed when we were getting the bus to games. He played tennis on the Saturdays in Elm Park and with that went the night life and the few bottles of Guinness. So once we collected him in the morning he’d sleep all the way down, get off the bus and be our best player! He was brilliant, he used to just hang in the air. I remember in training Willie used to give it socks when he was running by the dugouts where George was but once over the other side he’d be walking slowly. He was one of those naturally fit lads, Willie.”
He continues, “Like now, the teams with the most money always had the best players. Bohs had very little money and were always scratching around looking for players, trying to unearth a gem. Sean Thomas was an eye-opener for us. Prior to him coming, the theory was if you starve players of the ball during the week in training then they’ll be hungry for it come matchday. It was the way of thinking in England too at the time. The first day Sean arrived he marched out into training with two netloads of footballs. We were running around the touchline as we were used to doing and couldn’t believe the sight of footballs on the training pitch! Mick Cahill was the captain at the time and we said to him, ‘Ah Mick you’ve got to do something about this!’ Sean wanted to have an actual match in training, can you imagine, an actual match! We were all scratching our heads. George went around picking the teams and there was 15 a-side on the pitch in Dalymount in the dark using only the lights from the main stand! So we threw out two balls and played 15 a-side in the dark… with two balls! I remember there was a story doing the rounds about Bohs. There was a team called Midland Athletic that used to meet at Dalymount Lane before their games. They were warned not to go near the lane because Bohs would rob their players! I laugh now looking back but one of the first things I did later when I was manager myself was close the gap between Thursday and Sunday in terms of preparation. I always felt that a final session on a Thursday was too far away from the Sunday afternoons we used to play, so for the first time I introduced a Saturday session. A session on the day before the match is the norm now!”
Doubting Thomas…
The word on the street was that Billy’s Bohs career was on the verge of being over when Thomas took over. We will never know of course as Billy impressed the new man early on and they went on to forge a very close relationship that endured down the years. “Yes, I believe I was on the way out when Sean took over but we played a match down in Athlone soon after he arrived. I did really well and Sean asked me to stay. So I did and played my way into the team. Over the years I played wherever I was asked, centre half and right full mainly. Sean was brilliant. He was very organised and always came prepared. He knew the session he was going to put on weeks in advance. He took us away to Luxembourg on a sort of training camp and we played games in Germany and France. We were playing the old WM system with the two wing halves and Sean introduced the 4-2-4 and he used to tell us, ‘What I do is I force other teams to play like me,’ much as Jackie Charlton was later to do. We handled the continental teams well, alternated between the two systems and it gave us great confidence when we went back home to start our league campaign. We ended up finishing as runners-up in his first season. It was unbelievable. The previous year under George I think we only won one game all season! Sean revolutionised the club with lads like Kevin Murray, Jimmy Conway, Turlough O’Connor and Tom Keating. The other teams really struggled against the 4-2-4 and we continued to be very competitive.”
Silverware followed soon enough too as slowly but surely Thomas began to build something special at Dalymount. “We won the first trophy the club had won in 19 years when we beat Rovers in the President’s Cup final,” Billy recalls. “Now it’s a nothing cup, a battered little thing, but my God did it mean something to us! It was a replay and we were down 2-0. We hauled ourselves back and deserved to win and there were 20,000 in Dalymount to see it. An unbelievable day, still after all these years one of my happiest memories. Right throughout my career as a manager later I always put out a strong side in the President’s Cup and Leinster Cup. I always respected those competitions and believed they were there to be won. Despite the two leagues, FAI Cup, League Cups, that President’s Cup win, our first trophy in 19 years will always be my most precious memory.”
Billy’s Bowez…
Billy finished playing quite young, pun not intended, and that was not due to injury or disillusionment but due to his growing love of coaching and development. “I was going to every course or seminar that I could, anything that was to do with the mental side of the game, physical development, tactics, anything I felt was good for the game. When the time came I was offered the Bohs job and I was thrilled to take it on. I came in touch with Mick Byrne who was superb. He went to the same school in the year behind me and we had a very good school team. We are related by marriage and were on the same wavelength. He started a lot of reactions and we introduced exercises with weights. We got the free standing weights as we couldn’t afford anything else! It wasn’t the norm in the league, it was a totally new departure. That and the Saturday session in Grangegorman. It gave us a bit of ball time in daylight and a lot closer to the Sunday matchday. It helped us to get our ideas into them and work on the tactical side of the game.”
He is quick to pay tribute to his former mentor who encouraged Billy’s burgeoning passion for coaching and management even while he was still playing for the club. “Sean Thomas used to encourage me to go to as many of these courses as I could. He used to drop me down to Amiens Street after our own sessions on his way home to Greystones but we used to stop off at The Big Tree first. We were always discussing things. One thing he urged me to do was the Loughborough University course in England. I was accepted onto the course and it was one of the best things I ever did. I did another couple of years at Lilleshall under Dario Gradi who was at Crewe for many, many years where so many top players went to get their badges. I was there at the same time as the likes of Ron Atkinson, Terry Venables, Graham Taylor and Gordon Taylor. I remember one day Venables was taking a session and there were cows in the next field who wouldn’t stop mooing. In the end he just lost the head and shouted over at them, ‘I’ll deal with you later!’ I learned as much from the fellow players as I did from the coaches and kept in contact with many of them in my years in the game.”
A Goalden Era…
Just like in Thomas’s time, Billy’s revolutionary ideas and tactical acumen began to bear fruit in terms of silverware. As usual, he is too humble to take any credit for it but even now, nearly half a century on you can see the pride in the man as he talks about that golden period for the club at the end of the 1970s. “We won the league in 1975,” he says, “and I put a lot of that down to Mick Byrne. By Jesus he did his bit. He treated the injuries, did the gear, took the warm ups, introduced nutrition programmes, motivated the players and delivered plenty of home truths. If he sent a fella home from training for not putting it in, I backed him up to the hilt. Players weren’t long realising where they stood and they respected him for it. In what is now the Jameson Bar we used to set the weights up and the players bought into it. So many of them said to me that it made a huge difference to their strength and conditioning so it was one of the best things we ever did. Myself and Mick were always looking for ways to improve. Mick used to send them running up and down the terraces but not for endurance, rather to strengthen their knees. I remember Turlough O’Connor arriving one day with a big plaster on his leg. Mick ripped it off, ”Get out there and play would ye,’ he shouts at him! Whatever it took he gave and I was a bit like that myself so we worked really well together.”
Bohemians won the league for the first time in 39 years in 1975 but Billy has a very interesting take on that success. “It might surprise people who wonder at the feeling of euphoria and relief we must have felt, but honestly, it never entered our heads that we were going to be beaten. We planned to play a certain way and worked hard and we just kept winning. We had smashing players who gave it everything. We won the League, League Cup, President’s Cup and Leinster Cup. The B Team won the Castrol Trophy, the Youths won the Leinster Youth Cup, the Pepsi Cup and their League. I honestly believe the club never got enough credit for what we achieved. I remember Cork Hibernians were our big rivals at the time. We got them in the cup and drew. We were one up when Turlough hit the bar and from the rebound they went down and equalised and we had to go down to Cork. They beat us 1-0 but we were back playing them again the following Sunday in the League. The players really stood up and were counted that day and we won 1-0, handing us the title effectively. By the skin of our teeth we missed the clean sweep but we were still delighted and proud with what we achieved. Joe Burke was the best centre half in the League, a cruching tackler. When he used to take out his false teeth God he’d scare you and you’d run a mile from him! We had Mick Smyth in goal and Johnny Fullam who was just brilliant. Johnny Fullam used to be brilliant against the big centre forwards. He was some operator. But he wouldn’t come training on the Saturday and that’s why we parted ways in the end. We only conceded 12 goals in the league that year and yet when the Inter League squad was announced they had overlooked Mick between the sticks. He was in the dressing room moaning about it, ‘Jesus how can they leave me off? We only let in twelve all season.’ Joe Burke was sitting opposite tying his laces and he just looks up and says, ‘Yeah, twelve shots, twelve goals!’”
Winning on a Shoestring…
Billy’s Bohs went on to win the FAI Cup in 1976 and the League again two years later in 1978. These were no one-season wonders but, as Billy explains, there was a price to pay.
“When you get that level of success you get people trying to take your players. There was nothing I or the club could do about it. They were being offered huge money and they were young men often with families trying to get a start in life. I couldn’t stand in their way. We had one player offered £10,000 which I couldn’t believe. We couldn’t expect them to turn down offers like that. I always respected the players that were straight with me, who told me what was on the table. Tell me what the deal is and if I can’t match it you’d let them go with your blessing. The club’s system of membership is our greatest strength but was also a weakness. We couldn’t get investors in to compete because they’d want a say and a slice of any profit. The fact that we were run by members always stopped us from getting carried away and was our greatest strength in tough times. I used to spend a lot of time out scouting looking for players and it was hard to see them all go over the years. We just couldn’t afford to keep them or improve the facilities the way I wanted to.”
Throughout the 1980s Shamrock Rovers were winning all round them building an empire of sorts by taking Bohs’ best players. Yet Billy and his side came within a hair’s breadth of breaking the stranglehold on a couple of occasions and the side lost a couple of FAI Cup finals in that time too. Nearly-men in some respects, but Billy kept the club at the forefront of Irish soccer for many years with one hand tied behind his back.
“I remember someone saying about Malcolm Allison that he was a very good coach of mediocre players and a bad coach of good players. I was a bit like that and it’s not because I’m calling our players mediocre, they were far from it. No, I’m saying I always had to get the most out of what little I could get financially and I had to make the team greater than the sum of their parts. We could never hope to compete with the likes of Rovers financially and they always had the biggest squad and the big name players. But we always had spirit and made the best of what we had at our disposal. I tried to get the best players I could get that would come to us and I specialised in finding lads from schoolboy football like Pat Byrne, as good a player in the League as I’ve seen. In terms of the best I’ve seen, Frank O’Neill is right up there and Turlough too, a smashing player. I remember going to Manchester United for a week to look at training. Tommy Docherty was the manager with Tommy Cavanagh as his trainer and Frank Blunstone as his assistant. Frank was big into getting the Youth players in as often as possible to learn the skills of the game. He was big into preparation and doing up what we called ‘Topics’, what would now be called Modules I suppose, to work on specific skills be it crossing or overlapping fullbacks or whatever. But it was all about having your topics organised weeks, even months in advance. Another thing I learned from United much later, from Ferguson actually, ‘An unopposed session is a waste of time,’ he used to say. There has to be pressure on every pass, pressure on the ball, because that’s the way it’s going to be in a match. That took me back all the way to Paddy Coad and how he used to get me to put pressure on his Rovers first teamers.”
Eurovision…
Billy was the first manager to lead Bohs into the European Cup where they faced the might of Glasgow Rangers in what turned out not to be the only time we would face the Ibrox giants in Billy’s tenure. “Willy Waddell was the manager and Jock Wallace was the coach [in 1975], a man who I was to become firm friends with. Waddell was a brute of a man. I went to watch Rangers and was picked up by the chairman in his green Rolls Royce with a liveried driver. A few miles from Ibrox he stopped and changed over into an ordinary looking Merc. He didn’t want the poor unwashed to be jealous of his car. I was brought from the game to the gate going home and never got to speak with Wallace. Years later of course Jock Wallace was the manager and he took me into the boardroom where there was an array of smoked glasses with the club crest all filled with whiskey. He took me for a meal that night and our friendship stretched from there.”
But it’s the 1984 version of our rivalry with Rangers that Billy is perhaps best known for, an iconic 3-2 win in Dalymount over our illustrious Scottish visitors, two from Rocky O’Brien and a peach of a winner from Gino Lawless, followed by a desperately unlucky late, late defeat in Ibrox to send us out of the UEFA Cup. So what does Billy remember from that September evening in Phibsborough? “Surprisingly little,” he laughs. “I was caught up in the whole thing, you know. I was dug into the actual game so didn’t notice the occasion, if you know what I mean. I do remember that we could have won by more. And we were very unlucky over there. Late on, a nothing ball just hit a puddle and aquaplaned as Dermot O’Neill was coming out. It was a freak goal. Jackie could have scored late on too and we still would have gone through. It’s a case of what might have been. But looking back it was just an awful pity that we didn’t go through as it would have been Inter Milan with Liam Brady in their team at the time. It gave our players a great boost of confidence though and they really stuck their chests out. Jock Wallace always tells me I nearly got him the sack. When he had come over to scout us he asked me to take him out on the town. He was staying in The Gresham so I went in and took him to a few pubs. We ended up in Mulligan’s and we had a right old sing song. He sang ‘The Sash’ and all, and he was surrounded by rebels, probably the only time it’s ever been sung there!”
The Great Man…
Mention of Jackie Jameson makes Billy stop and sit back in his chair. One senses a special respect and fondness for the great man. “I still believe Jackie Jameson’s best performance for Bohs was not against Rangers but against Dundee United at Tannadice. They were desperately protecting their home unbeaten record, hanging on as we were drawing with them 2-2. Jackie was unbelievable that day and they had to double up on him with David Narey and Richard Gough. Absolutely brilliant he was and I remember lots of United supporters coming to the hotel wanting to meet and talk to him. A lovely fella, always happy. I never had a minute’s bother with him, never argued about money or contracts, loved the club and took every deal we offered him because he was happy here. One of the best day’s business I ever did was getting him and Barry Murphy from St. Pat’s. Jackie had just signed and unknown to me Jim McLaughlin was waiting at the end of the lane to meet him and persuade him to go to Rovers instead. But Jackie had no interest and Jim told me afterwards ‘I don’t know what you do with them but none of them would break their word to you.’ Jackie was being offered more money elsewhere but he kept re-signing for us. Barry Murphy was the same you know, so loyal. I remember one awards night Barry had had a fair few pints and when he got up to receive an award he was mumbling and slurring his words and you couldn’t make head nor tail of it. Rocky O’Brien was next up and when he was called on to speak he says, ‘Ah no Barry has said it all already!’
End of an Era…
Although his 16 years of management came to an end in 1989 he has retained a close association and affinity with the club and is still a very regular visitor down Dalymount way now in his 81st year. “I would have missed the game all right after I left Bohs,” he admits, “but I stayed involved. I was assistant to Don Givens for the Irish U-21s for 5 years and we were in charge of the full team the night Glen Crowe was given his debut in Greece! For 12 years I was the director of the Fás Course in football and ran it down in Athlone and in Dublin Sportslink. I was a founder member of the Coaches Association so I was still very much involved in the game. I’m very proud of my time at Bohs, no prouder than all the people who represented the club in all shapes and forms. The Captain’s Cap presented to me by Bohs is still among my proudest possessions. It was an honour to win trophies at Bohs especially given that it was done without the lure of money. And when I look at the club now I think we’re very much back to the same situation. Keith Long has done a smashing job and I love the way they try to play the game. It’s great to see the emphasis on youth too as it was always a core belief I held when I was at the club myself. All the schoolboy coaches and the number of young players at the club, it’s fabulous and it’s the basis for building something great. I love the atmosphere among the supporters, the way they clap the players and show their appreciation whether they win or lose, I really think that’s super. Whoever is behind the scenes is doing a brilliant job because there’s a buzz that I was always trying to get but never did. All the things they do, you just couldn’t put it down on paper, and for no reward either except the satisfaction of seeing their club thrive. All these people from the fans to the volunteers are just there for Bohemians, it’s not just about the result, they are there through thick and thin. The likes of Tony O’Connell and Turley, they’ve done great things for the club and absolutely love it. It’s lovely to be there and to be a part of it. It doesn’t happen easy in soccer so it’s a testimony to all the hard work being done behind the scenes. There are great people at the club, there always has been and I love going down to Dalymount even still.”
