Bohemian Football Club Crest

My receding grip on history tells me that not many men stand a post for over half a century.

Such a man exists in the shape of Jimmy Wiley, who made this achievement at no less a place that the spiritual home of Irish soccer – Dalymount Park. The redoubtable Jimmy acted as Commissionaire for Bohemian FC for the better part of 54 years. His trademark cap and long coat brought an air of substance and dignity to proceedings at the Players and Officials Entrance in a period when the great and the good (and perhaps not so good) of world football graced the field in Phibsboro.

Over the decades Jimmy rubbed shoulders with such international football giants as Stanley Matthews, Bestie and Bobby Moore and Bohemian giants like Willie Browne (the finest amateur of his generation), Billy Young, the Great Man himself and generations of other Gypsy heroes.

Like any innovative soul, Jimmy made the most of his official position to famously beat the mob to secure the signature of Edison Arantes do Nascimento, a name of sufficient length to reside on at least two pages of any self respecting autograph book. Thankfully the signatory is better known to you and I (and the entire civilised universe) as “Pele”.

There are scholars of the beautiful game who would count Jimmy as fortunate to have rubbed shoulders with football’s elite. But few scholars have wisdom, and the wise among us know that it was the footballers who were fortunate indeed to encounter the legendary Jimmy. Jimmy donned the Commissionaires cap for a fee of ten shillings (63c to you younglings) at a time when the small crimson note had some staying power in any local hostelry. But staying power was second nature to Jimmy who stood his post until he approached his 82nd birthday.

As for the cap you ask, and even if you don’t, I’ll tell you anyway. It passed for a brief time to the next incumbent. Alas, just like the policeman’s bicycle immortalised by my old comrade Myles na gCopaleen, Jimmy’s molecules and those of the cap perhaps fused to such an extent that his successor never felt comfortable below the celebrated headgear. It never quite fit regardless of angle or tilt – it is Jimmy’s cap and a cap can only have one master.

Jimmy, who is also an honorary life member, was missed around the ground in recent times. So it was with much relief as well as pleasure that I encountered him at the Bray Wanderers game. Thankfully Jimmy has returned to good health and is back in the Gypsy fold. He enquired after his old cap last week among members of the event team he soldiered with in twilight, and he wondered could he be re-united with it and have it as a keepsake of caoga blain ag obair.

Jimmy treasures the night last year when the club presented him with a gold watch as a mark of appreciation for his long service. On Friday May 1st at our home game against Dundalk, Club President Robert Dunne reunited the cap with its master and Jimmy will treasure that too.