Innovative Bohs Initiative Has Opened Football To A Whole New Audience

When Bohemians take to the field on Friday night to face Galway United, Dalymount will be awash with the vibrant colour of the red flares traditionally ignited by Bohs fans in the Jodi Stand.

As the sun sets over Phibsboro, Bohs will look to keep in touch with the title race, after a phenomenal early summer run that has them closer to the top than they have been since before the pandemic.

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For a select group of fans, however, the sights of Dalymount and of football present greater challenges.

Irvine Ferris has been working with Bohemians since the very last of those pre-pandemic days and works with the club on making the stadium a more welcoming place for those with disabilities.

Ahead of our first home game of 2023, we are delighted to appoint Irvine Ferris to the voluntary role of access officer. A long-time volunteer, he will build on the work to improve accessibility to the club for those with disabilities and those socially excluded or marginalised. pic.twitter.com/0uwRwHMLfK — Bohemian Football Club (@bfcdublin) February 24, 2023

One of the biggest projects of his role as Disability Officer has seen him take charge of the club's Audio Descriptive Commentary (ADC) service, which provides detailed commentary for visually impaired fans.

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ADC is significantly different from traditional radio or television commentary, particularly television, and serves the greater purpose of giving detailed and accurate descriptions of exactly what is going on on the pitch for fans who will struggle to see the action clearly.

"In audio-descriptive commentary, we really go into great detail on all the action that happens, not only on the pitch but also what’s happening in the stands," Ferris tells us.

Before the game, when the two teams are walking out, we’ll describe all the flags, all the banners. If there’s flares going off in the ground - what colour are the flares? A TV commentator is not going to describe that specific information.

To efficiently describe the action to fans who use the ADC service, the pitch is broken up into thirds. As the majority of fans who use the service are home fans who sit in the stadium's Jodi Stand, the ADC commentators are situated there and describe the action from that viewpoint, always from the perspective of Bohs.

"Say if the ball’s on the halfway line just in front of the Jodi, we’ll describe the ball as being on the near side in the middle third," Ferris explains.

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"You use that as a basis to build upon and we’ll use further information to build upon...the vast majority of our ADC is taken up with essentially mapping the ball across the pitch and it’s quite non-stop, particularly in the early parts of the game - they can be quite hectic and there’s no real flow to the game.

"We’ll try our best to describe exactly what’s going on on the pitch. Aside from mapping the ball around, we’ll also be extremely detail-oriented on the styles of passes or the styles of shots"

Ferris gives a brilliant example of the contrast between ADC commentary and how viewers of a match on TV may take in a game, referencing Jimmy Magee's iconic commentary of Diego Maradona's solo goal against England at the 1986 World Cup.

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He says, ‘Different class,’ four or five times, which obviously works really well for TV. But, for ADC, you’re missing out on the fact that Maradona had done a wonderful bit of skill to go past so many players, go round the goalkeeper and slide it into the net. A visually impaired person wouldn’t have been able to know exactly what happened.

Eamonn Gallagher is one of those visually impaired fans who regularly uses the service, and says it has revolutionised the way he engages with the club he supports.

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How Bohemians' audio-descriptive commentary allows visually impaired fans to enjoy the full League of Ireland experience

Eamonn Gallagher is a Bohemians fan who attended games in Dalymount during his teenage years before falling out of the habit in his 20s. That was partly due to starting a family, and partly due to the development of two serious visual impairments.

Gallagher developed both autoimmune retinopathy and birdshot uveitis at around 30, which severely limit his peripheral vision and have effectively removed the vision in his left eye.

While at a support group with fellow visually impaired people in his local area a few years ago, Gallagher and the other 12 participants were invited to Dalymount once again, in what would prove to be a fateful return.

"A fella from Bohs came in one and was like, ‘Any football fans in the room here? We’re thinking of trialling this audio commentary.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll go.’" Gallagher says.

"I think the first few games, they brought the whole group, so we probably had 12 of us attending the first couple of games. After a couple of weeks, it was just me who was still going. They were delighted to keep it going themselves."

The Audio Descriptive Commentary has been a complete game-changer for Gallagher:

What the commentary does for me is…I can actually follow the ball around the pitch, but if a long pass is played and the ball goes up in the air, I’m gone, I’ve lost it then. Then the commentary kicks in and they give you a location of where on the pitch the ball is, say the far side or the near side, defensive half or attacking half. I can find the ball just by what they’re telling me in the earpiece. The lads are very descriptive from start to finish...sometimes, someone’s saying, ‘This player has it, that player has it.’ That’s grand for you, you can see what’s going on, you know that player. If I’m sitting there and they get lost in players names, I’m like, ‘Where’s the ball on the pitch? I don’t know where the ball is!’ When they tell you positions on the pitch, you can get a picture in your head of what’s going on.

The service is used on every home match night by a core group of Bohemians fans. Irvine Ferris says that numbers vary but there are generally at least five fans in the home end using the ADC.

A core group of five commentators rotate duties at Dalymount during the season, with Ferris saying that two are typically on duty on an average match night due to the demands of the role.

"One person takes the first half and another person takes the second half - the reason being, you’d be surprised how tiring it can be!" Ferris admits.

"You’re talking for 45 minutes non-stop, plus extra time. It can be quite demanding. Sometimes people might have to do it on their own as well. I’d have to train up people on how to do it, and I’d train them on how we map the ball around the pitch. In nearly every game, a player will go down injured, and it can be quite a long injury.

"I try and tell commentators to come prepared with stats and news and all that kind of stuff - not just about Bohs but about the league, something to fill the air for those times as well."

It's an initiative that Ferris says has made football more accessible for a group of fans who may not have previously felt included, and it is not the only matchday initiative from Bohs for fans with disabilities.

The club has a ballot for accessible tickets for every home game, even with the challenges posed by the ageing Dalymount.

Bohs also go above and beyond in ensuring that those using the ADC can always access the stadium, Eamonn Gallagher tells us.

If I was ever going to a game on my own - which is very rarely, my mates have season tickets - the club have always said, ‘If you’re ever stuck and on your own, just let us know, someone will meet you outside at the bus stop, bring you in, get you set up, get you to a seat. If you need anything from the shop or the chipper van, we’ll gladly go and do all that for you, if you ever need it.’

Bohs have been trailblazers in this area, with other League of Ireland clubs introducing similar schemes in recent seasons.

Irvine Ferris hopes to see it spread even further, and says that accessibility is a key tenet of the design of the new Dalymount Park.

The most important aspect, for him, is improving facilities across the board.

I think the biggest factor is probably the facilities in the League of Ireland. Most stadiums, apart from one or two, say Tallaght and a few others, they’re not accessible and they’re quite old. We're working with the FAI and other parties to improve our stadium and hopefully we can make real progress soon. For me, I think that will be one of the biggest things we can do with regards to improving accessibility.

Ferris is also keen to make sure that fans who attend every home game at Dalymount are aware of how to access the ADC service.

"We’d like to get the word out more about it," he says.

"Sometimes people see me doing or see my team doing it, they’ll come up to us and say, ‘What are yous doing over there?’ Not even all Bohs fans would know what it is really. It would be something that would be great if we could get the word out a bit more."

The ADC headsets are available from Ferris and other volunteers as fans enter the Jodi Stand prior to kick-off on matchdays.

Audio Described Commentary (ADC) is available for tonight's match v Waterford at Dalymount Park. Headsets are available at the halfway line from 7.15-7.35pm. If you have any questions or require more information, please contact our Access Officer Irvine Ferris at… pic.twitter.com/pNH7GDWtdp — Bohemian Football Club (@bfcdublin) May 2, 2025

It may yet prove revolutionary for more Bohemians fans, just as it has for Eamonn Gallagher.

"If it wasn’t there, I probably wouldn’t have gone back to watching football," Gallagher says.

"When they first set it up, it was an opportunity to go to a game, something that you’re saying is off limits for you, you’re probably never going to do that again. To have something like that, commentary to go to that brought you back to it…since I started going, it’s something I look forward to."

A powerful statement on inclusivity in sport.

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