Bohemian FC’s future is surely in safe hands under the guidance of newly appointed Academy Director Alan Moore. Bringing boundless enthusiasm, fresh energy and a wealth of innovative ideas to the role, Alan has already made a hugely positive impression throughout the club, writes Tony Magner.
A distinguished player in his own right, Alan enjoyed a successful professional career with Middlesbrough and Burnley in England, as well as with Shelbourne, Derry City and Sligo Rovers here in Ireland, while also earning eight senior caps for Ireland. Combining his extensive football experience with a clear vision for youth development, Alan is determined to help nurture the next generation of Bohemians and build a bright future for the club. From the outset, when asked the straight question as to what Alan sees as his main aim or remit, he fixes a steely eye and is remarkably frank and succinct in his answer.
“I see my main role as being to produce a coaching programme for this football club that will produce players on a consistent basis, and to implement a coaching syllabus and plan for each age group that will produce players for the first team. Also, to create a culture where players will want to stay at this club throughout their journey, and for Bohs to be a club whose structures and best practice would attract young players and their parents.
“We need to make it such that players will not want to go anywhere else, that they’ll want to stay at Bohemians, that they would want to be a part of the Bohemian family. I see it as important that we look after players in a football sense, of course yes, but more than that, to look after them in other areas of their lives. We want to continue to build a reputation here over the coming years that Bohs is a good place to be and embed a culture that will foster those sentiments.”
Oscar Nomination
Central to this idea is the continuing development of the Oscar Traynor Centre, a facility that is rapidly becoming state-of-the-art and is already, Alan feels, the best in the league.
“The OTC is being developed and improved at such a fast pace, almost daily,” he enthuses.
“There have been huge improvements made there to create a good environment for players. We’ve developed a small-sided astro pitch right next to where the first team will train to enable us to bring kids in here from nine years old or so up, where they can train any night of the week, and do so right beside the U17s, the U20s, and the first teamers they aspire to be themselves one day. There are analysis rooms, meeting rooms, games rooms, changing rooms – it’s the best facility in the country and it would never have been so without the tireless work of so many volunteers in the club coming in and putting up signage, painting walls, even Nutsy cutting the grass! Phenomenal work has gone into the place from so many good people, without whom we wouldn’t be anywhere near where we are today with the place and the structures we are trying to build. These facilities are such that we can get the maximum contact with our young players, boys and girls, the perfect facility to impress upon parents that we are serious about their child’s development, and to impress upon young players that this is the place to be with the kind of philosophy and coaching programme that will be the absolute best for them.”
Moore Than Ready…
When asked to expand on what that coaching programme will look like, Alan’s passion for the project ahead is clear.
“We envisage building a full curriculum for the young players in our academy. You wouldn’t go into school and start a lesson with Maths and end it in French. Football education has to flow; it has to be clear and logical. Players who come to our academy will be coached in a methodical, constructive way with lots of reviews, and a lot more contact between parents and coaches. Parents put so much into their sons and daughters, give up so much, travel the length and breadth of the country, it is only right that they should be involved more, the parents and the individual player too of course, that’s what I meant by being a part of the Bohemian family. We will have small blocks of work for each age group within a coaching curriculum. Each module when completed will be discussed with the player individually and with their parents or guardians, where they did well, where they need to improve and how to go about doing so. This means the young player will be central to how we assess how well each segment goes, so that we are all aligned. This assessment will be based on the five pillars of coaching – Physical, Technical, Tactical, Social and Psychological. They’ll have a say in what that block of curriculum will look like for them. There will be building blocks, just like there would be in school, learning the technical skills with the ball first, then learning tactics etc.
“I am hugely excited about the project,” he adds. “It’s something I get a lot of satisfaction out of doing. A lot of hard work has been put into this academy by those who have gone before me, I can tell you, and that’s a huge bonus. The fact that it is a full-time role is crucial too because you can be around all the time to oversee and interact with all age groups, both boys and girls. I’m a very driven person, and very passionate about the game and how players should be developed. I started in an academy role at Bury in England and was asked to go to Carlisle then and implement the structures I had set up in Bury there too. So, I have six years’ full-time experience in an academy role that I will bring to bear in this job here at Bohemians.”
Alan Key…
As most Bohs fans will know, Alan has been at the club for the past couple of years, since the spring of 2024, in another key role, and though his Academy Director brief is totally different, he still feels those couple of years will help him to settle into his new position far quicker, as he knows the club now and what makes us tick as an institution.
“Having been here as Opposition Analyst Coach will be a huge advantage as that time helped me to get a great insight into this club, what its values are and how it operates, even away from football with all the good community work it engages in. Like the club does, I want the academy to put the person first. It’s not just about what a player can do with a ball at their feet, it’s about helping them as people and looking after them. It’s about how they are learning and what they are focussing on. In this respect, coach education will be a vital component of all things going forward.
“What I mean is, those boys and girls in the academy are not just players, we need to know about the person first. As coaches and academy personnel, we have to be open enough, and observant enough, to know our players – to know our people. Sometimes a boy or girl could have had a bad day in school or could be going through something in their personal lives. We need to be attentive to that and adjust coaching programmes accordingly to give them support when and where it’s needed. Again, linking back to the five pillars of coaching (Physical, Technical, Tactical, Social and Psychological) we need to look after those in our care when things happen in their lives that they maybe haven’t planned for or anticipated.
“When we were over in Midtjylland recently, one thing that really stuck with me is that they have a Psychological employee who is not tied to football, who is open to all employees and players at all levels of the club. We need to take a look at that down the road here too, because the way the world has gone, with all the challenges being faced by young people, we need to give them all the help we can. We need to support them with life skills away from the pitch too, and be the support they need, a place they feel safe and a club they can trust.”
Moore Than Meets The Eye…
Alan is not forgetting the end product of course. He just cares so much about how we get there. He knows that ultimately, the success of any club’s academy is judged by the rate at which graduates are brought into the first team squads. He is only too happy to agree that that is central to his remit.
“Yes of course, we are looking at end products too. Like any academy, we want to feed players forward into the men’s and women’s first team after all the hard work the coaches will have done, after all the hard work the young people themselves would have done and been guided through. But we want to produce players by design, not by accident, with a clear methodology and a holistic approach. Like any academy, we’d aim to have a conveyor belt of talent learning and playing the game the right way, starting will ball-mastery at a young age, getting comfortable on the ball, then formations and tactics as they get older, and as they get older still, to mirror the way the first team managers want to play on matchdays. So especially when players are young, we need to get them to learn the technical side of the game then how to play in different tactical situations.
“It won’t happen overnight,” he warns. “People need to be cognisant of that. The current contract funded by the government runs for three years and hopefully after that it will be reviewed and extended. Three years will make for a good start, but hopefully in the five or six years after that, we will really begin to reach the place where we ultimately want to be. To be honest, it is a whole change in the culture of Irish football, but I see clearly where we need to be at the end of it, and I am focussed and determined enough to get there. Soon we will also have a Head of Coaching, also government funded. Hopefully that person will be in place by the end of this season as we are currently looking at candidates.”
All Things Being Equal…
Another aspect Alan is crystal clear on is that the Bohemian Academy will be an equal opportunities institution where young girls will be offered the same chance to succeed and grow in the game as the boys.
“Girls and boys will get the same opportunities, will be on the same coaching plan and journey. I am the father of girls myself and am absolutely adamant that our academy will be equal in every way. I just want to see both girls and boys enjoy doing what they love most, playing football and learning the game. We need to push both sides of the club and hopefully all at the same venue too – the Oscar Traynor Centre. On the boys side, we have a technical meeting every month where the Director of Football, Pat Fenlon, the manager Alan Reynolds, the C.O.O. Jimmy Dignam and I meet and go through what’s been going on in the academy, assessing the progress of high potential players and young professionals. This is something that I would see as being integral to both the men’s section as it is now, and in the women’s section going forward.
“Another initiative I am working on is trying to pilot a C Coaching License for our female players, or a Grassroots License for those with less than five years’ playing experience. Maybe we can then keep some of these players in the club when their playing days are over, or at least further their footballing education as they go.”
The Person and The Player…
Alan is amongst old colleagues and friends here at Dalymount, another aspect that he feels has been a huge help as he starts to make his mark on our academy structures.
“It’s definitely helped me that I’ve known Pat and Alan so well and for so long. I played under Pat at Shelbourne and we won the league in 2004 and 2006. Rennie was in that team alongside me. Detser was in the reserves there at the time, he was our little ballboy! Murph (Alan Murphy) was in that reserve team too, so was Buzzer (Ger Rowe), Gary Deegan was there as well and Chris Bennion who’s with Gary in our U20 set up, I played with at Middlesbrough. The connection with Pat Fenlon goes back even further, as his father was my manager when I started out at Rivermount all those years ago. So, I’ve known Pat and Alan for years and years, and we’ve built up a trust and a relationship that can only be good when it comes to working in the same direction. I love the game, but football is a ruthless business, that’s why you need good people around you to help you do good things like build up an academy structure. What I’ve learned over the years at the clubs I’ve been at, is that football is all about people and it’s all about how those people are treated. So here at the Bohemian FC Academy, we’re going to be all about the people too, not just the player.”
This interview by Tony Magner first appeared in Red & Black, the Bohemians matchday programme.