THE INTERVIEW HAS finished and there is still time for a couple of quick snaps.
They stand side by side at the table tennis table and smile.
Then Ross Tierney grabs a bat.
He has an idea.
“Do you want me to pretend to hit him?” he says.
“Wha…”
Before Dawson Devoy can finish, he’s flinching.
The two friends, Bohemians teammates once again, laugh.
“See, told ye he doesn’t act like a man with three kids,” Devoy says.
“First in for training and last home, that’s me,” Tierney replies.
It’s approaching 3.30pm on Monday afternoon and the pair are the last remaining Bohs players at their training base in the sports campus at Dublin City University (DCU). Dublin GAA player Sean Bugler is another familiar face working around reception.
The mood is upbeat for obvious reasons, even if they are eighth in the Premier Division and just four points clear of Friday’s opponents Dundalk in the promotion/relegation spot.
Bohs beat Shamrock Rovers in the FAI Cup on the previous Friday and silverware is still up for grabs.
The pair left Dalymount Park within a year of each other after losing the 2021 Cup showpiece to St Patrick’s Athletic.
Tierney, now 23, joined Scottish Premier League side Motherwell that December and Devoy, 22, headed to MK Dons when they were in England’s League One the following July.
They have been reunited in Phibsborough over the last month.
Both had another season remaining on their respective contracts and had options to stay in Britain. There were different factors at play – managerial changes, loan moves, injury, arguments, broken promises – for wanting to come home but one reason at the heart of their decision.
“You need to look after your own happiness,” Devoy says.
“From the outside people will say that it’s the easy option coming home, but it’s not, there were difficult conversations with my family. My ma and da, they wanted me to stay in England but they also support my decisions. You go over there with these big expectations, from yourself and what other people think of you, but if you’re not happy you have to change something…”
Tierney waits for enough of a pause in Devoy’s point to add one of his own.
“People can say this and that, they can call me a failure all they like or say that we couldn’t do it over there. Some people who know ya just want to say, ‘Ah yeah, he’s over in England and doing great’, when it’s not the case at all. We know we could have stayed, we know we are good enough. Sometimes there are circumstances that are out of your control.
“I’m coming back with the drive to prove we can win things with Bohs, because I want to win the league and the cup and get back playing in Europe.
“So people can think, ‘Ah, it’s just the easy option to come home from them’. No. We’re both in a place where our own families wanted us to stay but we knew it was right to come home. They’re telling us, ‘Don’t do it’, but we feel it’s best for us.”
It’s Devoy’s turn to wait for an opening.
“It’s not an easy thing to say, ‘I want to come back’, but you have to do what’s right for yourself,” he says.
“People were telling me that I had to stay because of the opportunities that are over there, but in my head I was set on coming back. Once you know what’s right for yourself, you will do the right thing.”
The two former Republic of Ireland U21 internationals have personal lives that could not be more different.
While Devoy has moved back to the family home in Ashbourne, Tierney is a father of three – his children aged between one and five – and is engaged to Nicole.
They’ve been together since they were 16 and when he signed for Motherwell, it was a move the young family made together.
The first six months were about settling in. They sorted a house and when Leon, their eldest son who was born with an imperforate anus, got a place in a local nursery they really began to feel at home.
In late July 2022, Motherwell then lost to Sligo Rovers home and away in the second qualifying round of the Europa Conference League.
Graham Alexander, the manager who signed him, was sacked on the eve of Tierney’s first full Scottish season.
The relationship with his replacement, Steven Hammell, became strained, culminating in a row.
As tends to be the case in football, it happened in the showers at half time of a match.
“I was in the nip. I shouldn’t have done it. I said to myself, ‘Don’t do it, don’t do it’ — but then I did. I felt like it was right to make the point, but just the wrong time. I went to apologise and it was sorted out the following Monday. Well, I never played there again.”
A season-long loan to English League Two side Walsall was sorted for the most recent campaign.
“The most enjoyable period on the pitch but also the hardest off it,” Tierney says.
His youngest son, Archie, was born on 14 July 2023 and two weeks later he left Scotland. And his family.
“Nicole didn’t want to come down to England with the kids because they were settled in the house and it made sense because Leon had a place in the creche, plus it was only a loan.”
Daily video calls weren’t enough and the nature of the season meant over the following nine months, he could only got back to see his family four times.
“My daughter (Layla-Rose) was two in the October and she just wasn’t used to me being around. I’d come home and she’d run away from me in the corner making strange. It was heartbreaking. My eldest boy was like the father of the house at four years of age. When your kids don’t recognise you properly when you try to hug them, that’s the hardest thing of all.”
Tierney made over 30 appearances for Walsall and all of the indications were that a permanent deal would be finalised with Motherwell, so much so he informed them he would be staying in England.
“Then they changed their minds and tried to sign him instead,” Tierney says, laughing as he flicks his head in the direction of Devoy.
Once Nicole was able to find Leon a place to start primary school in Dublin this year the time was right to come home and be closer to family
“But she still wanted me to stay over there because she thought it was best for my career and the family. I don’t know how she does it, she puts everyone else first.”
Liam Manning brought Devoy to MK Dons within a week of winger Darragh Burns joining from St Patrick’s Athletic (Burns is now also back in the league, on loan at Shamrock Rovers).
Manning was sacked in the December and MK Dons had a new manager, Mark Johnson, until the end of the campaign, when he also lost his job.
Tierney’s old boss Alexander then took the helm at MK last summer.
“I texted Daws to tell him that he was not going to be a Graham Alexander player. He’s all about running, he’d rather you run without the ball then play with it.”
Within a few months Alexander was sacked by MK but by January, Devoy needed to play football and a loan to Swindon Town in League Two came at the best possible time.
A week later the manager who organised that deal, Michael Flynn, was also sacked.
“Then you’re beginning to think ‘Am I the actual problem here?’ Devoy says.
The constant upheaval and uncertainty was taking its toll.
“I kind of felt like the last year was a waste and I didn’t want to do that again,” Devoy says.
“Don’t get me wrong, I want pressure, I’d say we both want that pressure, yeah, and I want demands on me to be the best because I want to be successful and win things. I want to get as much from coming back as I can because I’m not at Bohs for the sake of it.”
Tierney, once again, is ready to pounce.
“I’m not coming back to chill,” he says. “Neither of us are. Yeah, we are getting paid well and we get it off the rest of the lads in the dressing room everyday about it.
“We know the standards we’ve set and if we do something wrong, we will get it. We’ve set a bar and lads expect us to raise standards so that’s what we’ve got to do.
“When I was looking at coming back and people said here, ‘Sure you know the club and what it’s about’, I told them that’s not why I’m joining. I want to get the club back to where we were. I want to win the league here and I think we both want to perform to a level here that shows people what we’re capable of.
“The way you’ve got to look at it, for the league to go places, to go where it needs to go, it needs to have players like me and him here. I don’t see anything wrong with starting again when we both still have the drive to do it.”
