NO matter what angle you come at Tiernan Lynch, he’s a great story. A success story. A story that has hard graft at its core.
It is amazing to think around eight years ago he was traipsing up and down the main street of Larne asking shop owners if they could spare a few quid to help keep their local football club afloat.
Larne FC were a struggling, cash-strapped Championship club and Lynch had assumed the managerial role – a poisoned chalice at the time – with a £300 weekly budget.
After displaying their impressive coaching credentials at Glentoran under Eddie Patterson, Tiernan and his brother Seamus were working for the love of the game when they hooked up with Larne.
Spool forward to earlier this week and there was the New Lodge Road man donning a Derry City scarf and doing those rehearsed and slightly cringy walks that TV people make you do.
Everyone wanted a piece of Derry City’s new manager at the Brandywell on Wednesday. TV. Online. Print. They needed their soundbites – and Lynch politely obliged.
From the days of walking up and down Larne’s main street as a regular Joe to becoming the manager of Derry City is some journey.
I sent a congratulatory text to Tiernan after the Brandywell club made its announcement.
He replied: ‘That wee bit of New Lodge in us fancied a crack.’
Tiernan Lynch is quite a shy individual. And yet, he’s still someone who has a burning ambition to do well in his chosen field.
He may be shy but he always backs himself.
He studied in America and was so taken by the whole collegiate system and how sport and education went hand in hand there.
He was one of the brains behind the Belfast Met course where football and academia blended into a fully fledged course, and which spawned the careers of so many current Irish League players.
He took many of his students to Larne with him where the Championship proved a steep learning curve – but at least it was a feasible way of allowing Larne Football Club to continue to exist.
When Larne businessman Kenny Bruce arrived on the scene soon afterwards to help save his native club from extinction, the feeling was Tiernan and Seamus Lynch would be surplus to requirements and that the club’s new owner would bring in a high-profile manager to take the team forward.
Why would Bruce even consider gambling on a young, unproven manager like Lynch?
In an interview with The Irish News last month, Bruce recalls: “The first time I met Tiernan face-to-face was in New York.
“I had probably four or five good conversations with Tiernan leading up to that first meeting.
“I called him to say: ‘Look, I’m truly inspired by our conversations. I just want to talk to you about how you would feel before you come to New York about how the future might look like if the situation was that you could be a coach and someone with a bit more experience could come in and help you develop. And then you take the reins and grow the football club.’
“Tiernan made it very clear in probably about 10 seconds that he wouldn’t be accepting that in any way shape or form.
“This was a guy who had a £300 budget at the time and had the desire and ambition to be a successful manager and coach. Tiernan and Seamus had been very successful coaching at Glentoran.
“They’d come to Larne with student footballers... So, clearly, he wanted the opportunity to work with a guy who had been successful in business, was going to invest his money... but he felt he was the right man for job and wasn’t going to compromise his own principles.
“I thought: ‘He’ll do for me’.
“If he’s got the guts to stand up to me and say: ‘That’s not going to work for me’ before I put any money in… I had instant respect for Tiernan.”
Lynch still suffers bouts of imposter syndrome - but with two Irish Premiership titles against his name, four Co Antrim Shields and qualifying the east Antrim club for the group stages of European football for the first time - perhaps those bouts have become more infrequent.
For the seven-and-a-half years Lynch was at Inver Park he never generated one negative newspaper headline. He would happily duck all media requests and go straight home after games and watch a re-run.
For him, the star at Inver Park was always the team and how they played football.
Only a few weeks ago, he was considering a move to Scottish Premier League club St Johnston. Although the move never materialised, it was a sign that he had itchy feet.
The time was right for Lynch and Larne to go their separate ways.
Lynch has achieved everything and more at Inver Park. Of course, Bruce’s investment was integral to Larne’s remarkable success (many Irish League clubs have had money and didn’t achieved anything) - but the project had strategy written all over it – from their work off the field to how the Lynch brothers honed the team into champions.
With such a modest population, it’s hard to know how Larne can grow when they’ve already reached the mountain top so quickly and so brilliantly.
That’s why the current blip they’re experiencing won’t do them a button of harm as it’ll allow them to refresh and renew under a new manager.
Right now, Tiernan Lynch is grappling with the awesome stature of Derry City Football Club and its lauded history.
Why should these big jobs be the preserve of the alleged bluebloods of League of Ireland football?
Why shouldn’t the Lynch brothers back themselves and put their stamp on the southern league?
What is abundantly clear over the last few years is that the New Lodge Road gene has served them both well.
More power to them.