Irish football team Bohemians share new Bob Marley-themed kit

NME

Irish football team Bohemians have shared a new away kit featuring Bob Marley‘s face – check it out below.

The shirt, created in collaboration with the Marley family and Universal Music Group’s merchandise division Bravado, commemorates the reggae legend’s last-ever outdoor gig, which took place at the team’s stadium, Dalymount Park, in 1980.

Daniel Lambert, COO of Bohemian FC, said of the shirt: “It brings me enormous joy to unveil this jersey today following years of work on the idea. The Marley concert at Dalymount is one of Ireland’s truly special musical events, his only ever Irish show and, sadly, his last ever outdoor one.

“His love of football is widely known to all, and that he played on our famous pitch before the concert, the same turf that some of the world’s best players have graced such as Pele, Best and Zidane is amazing.”

Of the famous 1980 gig, promoter Pat Egan added: “I think this is a brilliant thing in terms of the memories of the day, the first major worldwide star to play an open air gig in Ireland.

“It will be an iconic shirt and help keep the Marley legend alive and well on our island. The day itself, to see him on stage in the stadium, with the huge church steeple in the background was out of this world.”

The shirt is available for pre-order here, with 10 per cent of profits going to asylum centres across Ireland to provide musical instruments and football kits, in association with the club’s partners Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland (MASI).

Last year, Fontaines D.C. also sponsored an away kit by Bohemians to support a homelessness charity.

The band’s name appears on the front of the 2021/22 shirt, with 15 per cent of proceeds going to Focus Ireland.

In an interview with the Irish Times, Lambert said: “The jersey has a real homage to Dublin on it.

“It features the Poolbeg towers, the Grattan Bridge lamps. On the back it has ‘Beware of the risen people’. We took a tracing of that. It’s what Pearse wrote in the cell in Kilmainham… ‘Dublin in the rain is mine’ is on the inside collar, that’s one of [Fontaines DC’s] lyrics.”

Fontaines drummer Tom Coll added: “Bohs are an organisation that really care about the community. Having a Dublin football team having ‘Refugees Welcome’ be the biggest thing on their shirt, that’s amazing. Politically, in Ireland, we don’t like to align ourselves any party or anything like that, because… I don’t know, I feel like they’re all shit man.”

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