IT’S TEMPTING TO say that what has happened to Larne FC over the past seven years has a touch of the divine intervention.
On Thursday, they will take the field at Windsor Park (due to Uefa restrictions) to face Shamrock Rovers in the Uefa Conference League. A European game with the pride of an unofficial ‘All-Ireland’ tag attached.
Ian Cahoon joined the board in the summer of 2017. After growing up a couple of hundred yards away from Inver Park, he begged his father to take him as a child, where he fell in love with the red and white.
He doubled up his duties as media officer, but there wasn’t much demand in the early days when they were in the Championship, the second tier of the Irish League.
On a good day, they might have got 200 through the gates, but they had an ambitious young manager in Tiernan Lynch who had some revolutionary ideas for a football club if only things were different.
Cahoon’s day job is a Presbyterian Minister. A couple of months after he joined, a fellow Larne childhood fan by the name of Kenny Bruce arrived at the club.
Bruce was a self-made man who founded the online property company Purplebricks in 2012. At its height, it was worth £1.3 billion. It was registering a sale every 16 minutes. As a wheeze, he invested in a number of race horses trained by the former Newcastle striker, Mick Quinn.
One horse was called Inver Park. And in September 2017, he took over Larne, lock, stock and barrel.
His first decision was what to do with the manager, Lynch. From the New Lodge in Belfast, Lynch had played a bit for Cliftonville and Carrick Rangers.
But he had a life-changing experience of winning a soccer scholarship to an American College, Long Island University. From when he was 19, he was already gaining coaching badges, but America showed the worth of combining study and soccer.
As a player, his sessions involved running around The Waterworks (a local park) until he vomited. In America, the coaching involved 11 v 0 drills where coaches would stop and direct players through plays. He lapped it all up.
When he came back, he coached a bit with Cliftonville underage sides and then went to Glentoran, serving under four different managers, before he got a break with Larne.
Bruce wanted to take his measure. So he flew him first-class to America where he laid out his vision of Larne as a full-time club, backed up by a thriving youth section on scholarships, and a training base called ‘The Cliff’.
Even before that meeting in the Hyatt Hotel, just off Times Square, he asked Lynch how he might feel about assisting a more experienced manager and waiting as part of a succession plan.
Lynch said there wasn’t a chance of that. Bruce fell hard for that conviction and decided to back all his plans.
Bear in mind the shape that Larne were in at the time. Lynch used to wander the streets calling into businesses trying to scrounge a few quid here and there for the club.
They weren’t even in Inver Park; the first four ‘home’ games of the 2017/18 season were actually played away. His budget was around £300 a week. He was enticing players from Belfast Met, hiring character and teaching the skills.
Now, Larne are back-to-back Irish League champions. Inver Park is spruced up and used to crowds of 2,000 or more. The investment is well over £5 million, inching up towards £6 million.
Bruce is there for every second home game, despite being based in England since he left his working-class roots to attend Southampton University, before dropping out and working with his brother.
They are a full-time operation and are churning out players under the scholarship programme, which is run in conjunction with the Steven Gerrard Academy and Larne High School.
Dylan Sloan and Matthew Lusty have progressed to become first-team regulars. There is a tranche of younger players simmering just beneath the surface such as James Simpson, all Northern Ireland underage internationals.
With such an increase in fans, it stands to reason that they aren’t just awakening a dormant fanbase. Instead, support has come from all communities.
Lynch and his brother are the ideal figureheads, lads raised in a Nationalist Belfast estate managing a club in a staunchly Unionist town.
The workforce is mixed. Players go into all the local schools without exception. Bruce himself even backed integration proposals for Larne High School in the past.
Newington, a respected amateur soccer club from a working-class and Catholic north Belfast area, play all their home games at Inver Park where they are treated like royalty, Larne even decking out a dressing room in Newington’s green and black colours.
Larne would have a reputation from the outside of different things. I think it’s been often said that the best thing out of Larne has been the ferry to Scotland,” says Cahoon.
“What’s happening is putting the town on the map for much more positive things. It would have had a reputation during the Troubles and the aftermath. But, nobody is at the gates asking where you are from and what ‘side’ of the community you are from.
“That’s one of the most pleasing aspects, the huge rise of families coming to games. There’s been a real capture of the imagination. Political persuasion or beliefs is left at the door and that’s been a huge positive.”
Bruce’s ambitions have been realised. The Town is lifted off its knees.
