Bohemians Praha 1905 is a football club from Vršovice in Prague, founded as AFK Vršovice. The name Bohemians and the kangaroo in the crest come from the club's tour of Australia in 1927.
Bohemians Praha 1905 is a football club from Vršovice in Prague. It was founded under the name AFK Vršovice, its stadium is nicknamed Ďolíček, and the club's members are called the Kangaroos [1][2].
Beginnings in Vršovice
According to the club's website, the history of football in Vršovice goes back to the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. SK Vršovice was founded around 1900, and in the first years of the new century a sports circle called Kotva, a direct predecessor of today's club, was also active. Jan Honejsek and Otakar Bohata played for Kotva, later significant figures of AFK Vršovice [1].
The turning point came on 16 December 1905. SK Kotva Vršovice then became the fourteenth member of the newly established Czech Football Association and began to appear under the name AFK Vršovice. The original Kotva meanwhile continued its activity. AFK Vršovice was officially founded on 18 March 1906 in the inn of Marie Bohatá, the mother of Otakar Bohata, which stood on the site of today's Holandská Street. A week later the club, in its first competitive match, in the Charity Cup, beat Slavoj Žižkov 2:0 [1].
Australia and the kangaroo in the crest
In 1927 the club made a tour of Australia, which the international secretary Zdeněk Kalina had long negotiated. The hosts originally wanted to invite the national team, and the Vršovice side therefore travelled under the borrowed name Bohemians. The party consisted of sixteen players and two officials. The whole journey lasted from 7 April to 30 July, that is 114 days. The team won one match already on the way, in Ceylon, and in Australia played nineteen matches with a record of fourteen wins, two draws and three defeats. After their return, 15,000 people welcomed them at Wilson Station. Shortly afterwards the club's committee decided to adopt the name Bohemians and to place a kangaroo in the crest [1].
Prague Zoo states that preparations for the tour began in 1926, shortly after the publication of the humorous novel Klapzuba's Eleven. According to the zoo, Zdeněk Kalina feared that this nickname would stay with the club. In the end the club began to be called AFK Bohemians thanks to the trip, and because it also brought back two kangaroos from the other side of the world, it received a kangaroo in its crest and in its nickname [2].
The kangaroos on their way to Prague
The pair of animals was handed over to the Vršovice players on 20 June 1927 at a farewell evening at the station in Brisbane by the Queensland secretary for public works and chairman of the local football association, M. J. Kirwan. The kangaroos were meant as a gift to President Masaryk, who, as later turned out, had no interest in them. From Brisbane they were taken to Sydney and loaded onto the steamer Orvieto, which the whole Vršovice team also boarded in Perth. On the ship, according to the zoo, they were looked after mostly by the goalkeeper and forward Jaroslav Hybš. He later recounted that one animal escaped him on deck and dragged him across the deck as he tried to catch it with the help of sailors [2].
In Venice the transport of the kangaroos was delayed by a veterinary inspection, and they therefore reached Prague later than most of the team, probably on 31 July 1927. It had already been decided earlier to place them in the newly founded Leknín Vivarium in Havlíčkovy sady. The evening edition of Národní listy printed their photograph on 2 August 1927 and two days later wrote that they had quickly got used to the other exhibits. Národní politika described that in a single day so many visitors came that the facility could not be closed even at seven in the evening, although it opened at nine. For the animals, which until then had lived in a crate, a cage five metres long and three metres high was built. According to the same paper of 9 August, the team from Vršovice kept the crate as a memento [2].
Ďolíček
The first pitch of AFK Vršovice lay in a cut in a slope by the road to Strašnice, which today is called Vršovická třída, between two barracks complexes. Football had been played there since 1912, and the plot was fenced two years later. The pitch was narrow and, according to official figures, held 6,000 spectators; the nickname Ďolíček had already caught on for it at that time [1].
At the end of the 1920s the ground ceased to be sufficient for the public's interest. The new stadium on the present site was opened in 1932 thanks to the commercial councillor and honorary club chairman Zdeněk Danner and the municipal official František Bureš. The entrepreneur Jindřich Waldes helped to obtain the plot below the Vršovice Sokolovna by the Botič, where another local club, Union, had been based until 1929. The stadium, named after Danner, was designed by the Vršovice architect A. Vejvoda. It was ceremonially opened on Sunday 27 March 1932 at an Easter tournament; in the first match, Bohemians lost to Slavia 1:4 in front of 18,000 spectators, and the first scorer received a gold watch. Supporters long called the new stadium Dannerák, but over time the name Ďolíček caught on for it as well [1].
Antonín Panenka
The club associates the year 1968 with the arrival of Antonín Panenka, whom it describes as still the most famous Kangaroo today [1].