Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
MAXIE SWAIN tal
LIKE most people, Jeff Hughes admits he’s still a little bewildered by what is unfolding at Larne.
He may be on the inside, the star draw after returning to his hometown club following a 13-year tour of duty in the English Football League, but even he says the scale of the revolution heralded by real estate tycoon Kenny Bruce’s takeover, and the pace of change both on and off the pitch, is a little surreal.
Just over a year ago, the harbour outfit was languishing at the foot of the Championship, its very existence hanging by a thread.
Drawing measly crowds of less than 50 people to its dilapidated, antediluvian home at Inver, the future looked bleak for a club whose best days, the giantkilling feats of the Eighties, had long since passed.
Fast forward 12 months and the place, and squad, is unrecognisable.
By now, most people are familiar with the story. Purplebricks entrepreneur Bruce, who spent his childhood in the town and fell in love with the club, didn’t just bail them out in their hour of need, he backed them to the hilt, to the tune of a reported £5million in fact, buying the ground off the council for £117,000 and inaugurating a total overhaul of the playing staff, facilities and infrastructure right down to the academy.
Phase one in the redevelopment of the ground has now finished, with the grandstand extended, a new 4G playing surface laid and state-of-the-art floodlights installed.
A total revamp of the team was also sanctioned, with Tiernan Lynch’s squad a top flight one in everything but name, and Inver now one of the most attractive destinations for the country’s top players.
It’s the kind of fairytale never before witnessed in the Irish League… heck, they even headed off to Andorra for a training camp over the summer.
“It’s good to be here, there’s a lot of change since the last time
I’ve been here,” said Hughes, fully aware of his understatement.
“It’s unbelievable to be honest, it’s one of them things where you are not quite sure it’s actually happening.
“Like most Irish League clubs, the last time I was here, it was struggling to make ends meet, but the professionalism there now is… you would have to see it to believe it.
“The food we have after training, we have a place to relax, we have pool tables, table-tennis, the training’s fulltime, the coaches are first class and everything is planned out across the week.
“It’s just a very, very professional set-up and, like I say, until you’ve seen it you probably wouldn’t believe it.
“And for me, it’s the reason I came back to be honest. If it was part-time football to have a laugh and a joke at the weekend, I wouldn’t have come back, I would have stayed in England, but with Larne being my club it was an easy decision to be honest.”
Talking to Match On Tuesday last December, Larne chairman Gareth Clements pledged the new ownership are “here for the long haul”.
What he meant was that, in these crazy times when so many clubs throw obscene amounts of money around in an attempt to buy instant success, Larne’s model was more restrained, with the club determined to become sustainable and pay its own way eventually.
And that approach, plus its outreach into the community, has chimed with Hughes.
After completing the purchase of their ground from the council in July, the club is now a major stakeholder in the harbour town, while the amalgamation of Larne Youth allied to their coaching work in surrounding schools has extended their influence deep into the very fabric of the area.
“Everyone has seen it before, people coming in with finance and just trying to buy a few players and win everything,” said the 33-year-old midfielder.
“But it’s not like that here, everything is being done right and it’s being done properly. We’re trying to build it up. The club have taken over Larne Youth and there is a whole set-up with the kids and training them how to play.”
While undoubtedly the marquee signing of the Bruce era, the fact Hughes’ return to Inver was met with barely raised eyebrows rather than outright disbelief is a sign of the times.
There’s been a procession of high profile arrivals over the last year or so – admittedly the vast majority of them from within the Irish League, and specifically Cliftonville.
Hughes says Lynch first made contact midway through last season, but at that stage – initially anyway – switching from Tranmere Rovers to the Irish League’s second tier wasn’t on anyone’s radar.
“I’d been talking to the manager since Christmas and he was more inquiring about how things were done in England,” explained Hughes, twice at senior level for his country.
“Obviously he wanted to be a professional coach and had big plans so we were more discussing how things were done.
“Tiernan is very keen to learn, even now. He watches the big clubs to see how they do things to see what he can pick up, so a lot of it was that.
“But over Christmas, I was starting to think, ‘I would like a bit of that’, and that’s how it came about.”
After a barnstorming pre-season which included wins over Premiership trio Crusaders, Dungannon Swifts and Warrenpoint, Larne came into the new campaign in bullish mood.
But Hughes reckons the rude awakening they had in the opening fixture, a 1-1 draw at Knockbreda, was a blessing in disguise, smoking out any complacency or delusions of grandeur. Since then, the Inver Reds have been rampant, winning five straight league games before a thrilling 2-2 draw in Saturday’s top-of-thetable clash with Portadown.
“We had a good pre-season so I think the expectation was very high,” said Hughes.
“I think with the pre-season we had, maybe people were thinking we were just going to walk the league.
“But the first game was a draw away and we sort of realised after that that we can’t take anything for granted.
“And we’ve adapted well. We’ve had a really good start, so overall we’re pleased. We can’t really ask for any more than to be sitting at the top of the table.”
Before this season, Hughes’ last involvement for Larne came way back in the 2005 Irish Cup final against Portadown. It was an against-thecapped