About the Famous Kangaroos of Bohemians

Director´s view

Miroslav Bobek  |  18. 01. 2025


This year marks 120 years since the football club AFK Vršovice, today’s Bohemians 1905, was founded. That’s why I made a little search into the history of kangaroos, which are inseparably connected with this club.

Red-necked wallabies—though not the continental subspecies, but rather the Tasmanian one—can be seen today in Darwin’s Crater in Prague Zoo. Photo: Petr Hamerník, Prague Zoo Red-necked wallabies—though not the continental subspecies, but rather the Tasmanian one—can be seen today in Darwin’s Crater in Prague Zoo. Photo: Petr Hamerník, Prague Zoo

AFK Vršovice began preparing for their famous Australian tour in 1926. It was shortly after Eduard Bass’ humoristic novel Klapzubova jedenáctka (Klapzuba’s Eleven) was published, and the international secretary of the club Zdeněk Kalina worried that “we will be stuck with this nickname”. It turned out differently. Thanks to the Australian journey the club started to be called AFK Bohemians, and since the Vršovice team also brought two kangaroos from the antipodes, a kangaroo got into both their emblem and nickname.

The Bohemians team received the pair of kangaroos on June 20, 1927, during a farewell party at the Brisbane train station from the Secretary of Public Works of Queensland and the President of local football association M. J. Kirwan. They were supposed to be a gift to the President Masaryk, but as it later turned out, he was not interested in them. After being accepted the kangaroos were transported from Brisbane to Sydney and there loaded on the steamboat Orvieto. The entire Vršovice team boarded the same boat when she stopped in Perth.

The goalkeeper Antonín Kudla and the striker Jaroslav Hybš apparently took most of the care for the kangaroos on the boat. The latter recalled afterwards: “… I was feeding them and one of them ran away on board the boat. When I caught it with the help of the sailors, it was dragging me across the deck and gave me a real hard time…”

After disembarking in Venice, the transport of the kangaroos to Prague was somewhat delayed due to a veterinary check-up, therefore, they arrived only after the larger part of the team, probably on July 31, 1927. It had been already decided that they would be placed into the recently founded Vivárium Leknín in Havlíčkovy sady in Prague. Already on August 2, 1927, the evening issue of Národní listy published a not very clear photo of both kangaroos and two days later the same journal informed that the kangaroos “got quickly acclimatised in the environment of other exhibits”. After another two days for a change Národní politika published an article titled “A Visit in the Prague Seat of Australian Kangaroos”. There we can read: “In a box, the half metre tall kangaroos jump happily, sometimes sit on their hind legs and they seem to already be familiar with the surroundings. Food lies on the bottom of their home: hay, corn and oats. The management of the facility does not know, what they like to eat most, but according to observations so far, probably everything. In a box from biscuits, they have water from Káraný water treatment plant, which they are said to like very much. The place reserved for them is tight, but yesterday evening a beautiful cage was built, five metres long, 3 metres high; therefore, the kangaroos will hopefully be satisfied now. (…) Yesterday so many visitors came that even at 7 pm the facility could not be closed although it had been open since 9 am. (…) Now the kangaroos will live better in the large cage than in the box. They will soon grow to one metre tall and perhaps we will see their descendants?” By the way, Národní politika mentioned on August 9, that “the Bohemians team from Vršovice took the box, in which the kangaroos used to live, and will keep it as a souvenir”.

Unfortunately, we don’t know how long the kangaroos lived in Havlíčkovy sady. In the period press they were still mentioned as a plural in July 1929, later only one was written about. I found the last mention about the second of the pair of kangaroos in a newspaper from the end of January 1931.

Also, it is not stated anywhere which exact species they were. In connection with their donation to the Bohemians in Brisbane “wallaby species” is mentioned. But this is a general term used for many species of middle-sized kangaroos. Vilém Němec—a great competitor of Professor Jiří Janda in his attempts to found Prague Zoo—wrote in his article, dedicated to Vivárium Leknín, about “rock wallabies”. Unfortunately, I haven’t found any more detailed descriptions of the Bohemians kangaroos, and besides the photo published on August 2, 1927, in Národní listy, I succeeded to find in the depths of internet only two more alleged photos of them, also of very low quality. Using these images, we tried together with my colleagues from Prague Zoo—Jaroslav Šimek, Pavel Brandl and Ivan Rehák—to identify the kangaroos. With help of experts from Australia we reached a preliminary conclusion that they could be red-necked wallabies or agile wallabies. The first option seems to be much more likely.

I have not managed to find out more about the pair of the famous kangaroos yet. As for any other information, I didn’t succeed at the Bohemians football club either. But perhaps this column will contribute to the emergence of so far unknown materials or information.

In any case, kangaroos have survived in the emblem and the nickname of Bohemians football club for almost one hundred years. And even more: they play a significant importance in Czech-Australian relations until now.