To comprehend the recent revival of Larne FC requires proper context.
Retreat to October 2017 and the club were bottom of the Northern Irish Championship — the country’s second tier — with their Inver Park stadium deemed unfit for use by the local council over safety concerns. The entirety of their first-team squad and coaching staff had left at the expiry of their contracts that summer.
Tiernan Lynch, previously a coach at the Belfast Metropolitan Football Academy, was appointed in his first managerial role and tasked with rebuilding a club without a home ground and flinging together a squad on a shoestring budget. Lynch turned to players from the youth academy where he worked. His team, comprised mainly of teenagers, took just two points from their opening seven league matches.
Fast forward seven years and the transformation is staggering.
Larne have won back-to-back Irish Premiership titles and, this season, became Northern Ireland’s first ever representatives in the group stage of a European competition. Today (Thursday), they host their first game in the UEFA Conference League — against Shamrock Rovers, the champions of the Republic of Ireland’s League of Ireland.
“It has been a hell of a journey,” Lynch, 44, tells The Athletic. “But that has made the success extra sweet.”
Let’s be clear, Larne’s rise to the summit of the game in Northern Ireland is no underdog story.
In 2017, they were taken over by Kenny Bruce. A native of the harbour town a short drive north of Belfast and a lifelong fan of the team, Bruce had co-founded the online estate agency Purplebricks five years earlier. So successful did the business become that, in 2018, Bruce entered the Sunday Times Irish Rich List. In the past seven years, he has invested £5million ($6.5m) in Larne, a gigantic sum for a Northern Irish club.
Yet Larne’s story is also about sustainability, long-term strategy, and innovation. Of Bruce’s investment, £3.7million was directed into the club’s infrastructure: notably the youth academy, training facilities and Inver Park itself, which reopened after a makeover and is now a compact, vibrant ground. “It was crucial for us to invest in the academy, in the facilities, in the female game and in the commercial side of the club,” explains Bruce.
Larne’s rise from the fringes of Northern Irish football to its mainstream was further helped by ambitious marketing drives and staffing the club’s non-football roles, a process overseen by chairman Gareth Clements and chief executive Niall Curneen.
Inver Park has benefited from Bruce’s investment (Liam McBurney/PA Images via Getty Images)
Bruce’s investment made headlines just months after the takeover, when striker David McDaid returned to Northern Ireland to find a new club. A meeting with David Healy, the country’s most famous and prolific former striker and manager of then-champions Linfield, persuaded McDaid to verbally commit to joining him at Northern Ireland’s most successful club.
That afternoon, McDaid honoured a pre-existing promise to meet Lynch and Bruce at Belfast’s Europa Hotel as a courtesy. By the end of the day, the striker had informed Linfield he would instead be joining Larne, then in the domestic second division.
In the summer of 2018, right-back Tomas Cosgrove, then 25, decided to leave boyhood club Cliftonville in the top flight to join Larne, who were still in the second tier. Cosgrove is now Larne’s sole survivor from their days in the Championship; captaining the club to their first league title and into the Conference League proper.
“It was a huge risk,” says Cosgrove on his move from Cliftonville. “I got dog’s abuse for it and everyone warned me it would go wrong, but that motivated me.” Fans of Larne’s rivals saw McDaid and Cosgrove as mercenaries, simply putting money ahead of their careers. But that created a siege mentality at Inver Park.
Lynch, alongside his brother and assistant coach Seamus, had previously coached at Belfast clubs Glentoran and Cliftonville — where they had known Cosgrove as a youth player. “They always kept in touch after that,” Cosgrove explains. “What clinched my decision was Seamus telling me they would look out for me, no matter what I decided. They cared about me.”
Cosgrove now lives in Larne and as well as being captain he coaches in their youth academy, where his son plays. “I would run through a brick wall for the club,” he says. “It is a community — half of us are never away from the training ground.”
Cosgrove captains the side and also coaches in Larne’s academy (Liam McBurney/PA Images via Getty Images)
The Lynch brothers have lived in the United States, earning degrees through the U.S. collegiate system. There, they were exposed to an education collaboration that allowed teenagers to embark on a professional football career while maintaining full-time studying. Inspired by this, they were convinced Northern Ireland needed to modernise into a similar model.
Together, they became coordinators at the Belfast Metropolitan College Football Academy while working as part-time lecturers. Their goal was to develop footballers, aged between 16 and 19, who dreamed of going professional. Many students were attached to part-time clubs in the Irish Premiership, but the programme had wider interest.
The students would spend two-and-a-half hours training in the morning followed by four hours of studying. The Lynches believed the prism of football enhanced the appeal of education, while exposure to education would enhance sporting performance. Dozens of current Irish Premiership players and several internationals — for both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland — came through the programme.
These were the players who provided the bedrock of Tiernan Lynch’s first talented, but inexperienced, Championship team at Larne.
Larne’s coaching team (from left): coach Gary Haveron, head of recruitment Gerry Flynn, manager Tiernan Lynch and assistant Seamus Lynch (Larne FC)
When Bruce completed his takeover, he organised a flight for Lynch to meet him in New York. The rookie manager’s pitch was based on the programme he’d helped create, and embedding it into Larne. Bruce approved the idea, and the wheels began to turn.
“The synergy across all the sections of the club has allowed us to build momentum and has provided the bedrock of what we have achieved,” says Bruce. “Everyone appreciated the change and there was less scepticism — due to the club’s situation — than may have existed elsewhere.
“We were clear from the beginning that our approach would be flexible, engaging with our fans and stakeholders, and learning from them. We believe players leaving Northern Ireland aged 16 is an additional challenge at a tender age in terms of developing key skills and athleticism. We want those players to spend a few more years here in a full-time environment: to overcome the challenges of adolescence, then to make the move when they are ready to compete across the water.”
Seven years on from the introduction of their BTEC scholarship programme, Larne have 36 full-time scholars aged 16-18 and six full-time players out on loan on a foundation degree. “We had to build a football club from the top down,” says Lynch. “We wanted to create an environment to attract the best young players. One of the ways we wanted to do this was by the style of football we played, focusing on passing and movement.”
Larne academy graduates Dylan Sloan and Matthew Lusty are now Northern Ireland Under-21 internationals. Several more of their youth players represent the nation in the under-17 and under-19 teams. “We want this strategy across Northern Irish football,” says Lynch. “We may be the first club to qualify for the European group stages, but we have to help ensure we aren’t the last.”
Larne owner Kenny Bruce, left, with club chairman Gareth Clements (Larne FC)
Larne’s domestic ascendancy is precarious, however.
Unlike fellow Celtic nations Scotland (Celtic and Rangers) and Wales (The New Saints), Northern Irish football does not have a hegemony on domestic success. Larne are the sixth different club this century to win the title. That figure does not include Coleraine, Ballymena United or Glenavon, who have all enjoyed either cup successes, fleeting title challenges, or both. The top division is competitive and fluid.
Going into today’s match against Dublin-based Shamrock Rovers, Larne are eighth in the 12-team NIFL Premiership nine games into the season. Their ranking is skewed by having played four fewer matches than those above them, but their extreme European schedule puts considerable strain on their domestic calendar, with little time to train or prepare between games. Even if they win all their games in hand on them (three), they would still trail leaders Linfield.
“We are privileged to be where we are, but this is the biggest challenge we have faced as a team,” says Lynch.
Club captain Cosgrove agrees. “It is the psychological side that is toughest,” he says. “You are constantly having to analyse more: in-game tactics, working on set pieces, and then the emotional energy.”
Last week, the squad were given five days off for some head space. “That has rejuvenated us,” adds Cosgrove. “My boy is at the age where he now believes we can beat any team in the world, and that feels special.”
Larne are also adapting without striker Lee Bonis, the Northern Ireland international who was transferred to Dutch club ADO Den Haag in the summer. The 25-year-old’s exit followed the sales of defenders Craig Farquhar and Kofi Balmer (now at Motherwell of the Scottish Premiership) to Premier League side Crystal Palace, whose former manager, Iain Dowie, is Larne’s football relationships director. Aberdeen, another team in Scotland’s top division, also paid a transfer fee for teenager Noah McDonnell.
That income stream is vital for developing the club’s long-term commitment to full-time football and sustaining the money without further Bruce investment.
Palace’s Farquhar (left) challenges Leicester’s Tawanda Maswanhise in an under-21s fixture in February (Plumb Images/Leicester City FC via Getty Images)
Larne have struck a sponsorship agreement for Inver Park to be renamed with high-end watch dealers Pride & Pinion. The six-figure sum is believed to be the biggest for any Northern Irish club.
“You have to make hay while the sun shines,” says Bruce. “We are guardians of the club and our objective is to put it in the best stead for the long-term. We are a well-oiled machine, but we have to keep developing and making the right changes, or it will fall apart quickly.”
Nothing can encapsulate Larne’s last seven years as succinctly as Inver Park being condemned by the local council to the ground being renamed after luxury watchmakers.
The club’s fans are savouring every second.
(Top photo: Valerio Pennicino – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)
Read the full article here