'Fairytale come true': Larne complete Cinderella-style transformation by bagging league title with two games still to go

​The roughly 1,300 or so Larne fans watching the game at Crusaders’ home ground erupted as the full time whistle went, securing their team victory in the league even with another two games in hand.

It is the result of a massive reversal of fortunes brought about largely by business tycoon Kenny Bruce, who in 2017 opted to start ploughing money into his native town’s club, taking it from a floundering second-class outfit with a stadium that was falling apart to a historic triumph in the space of seven years.

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'It will be hard to describe the sense of pride': Larne on cusp of historic league triumph after rags-to-riches reversal of fortune

While there will be many who will begrudge the club’s newfound top flight success as the product of mere money (and plenty were doing so on Twitter last night), for the club and its often long-suffering fans it was a moment of both “pride” and “joy”, according to Ian Cahoon.

Rev Cahoon, 38, is a Presbyterian minister, the club’s chaplain, and its publicist too.

A lifelong reds devotee, tonight he said there were comparisons with the famous turnaround enjoyed by Leicester FC.

Leicester were the unexpected winners of the 2015/16 English Premier League, having spent much of the previous season bumbling about at the bottom of the table (reportedly, the odds of them winning had been 2,000/1, leading one man who bet £100 on them to take the season walking away with £200,000).

Last night’s final scoreline was Larne 2: 0 Crusaders, although Larne had only needed to draw to secure the title.

“We finished the job off in style,” said Rev Cahoon.

Asked whether this was indeed a kind of Irish League version of the Leicester story, he said: “There are a lot of comparisons. If you said four or five years ago we'd do this, I don't think too many people would have believed it.

"It's a fairytale story for people that have followed the club for a long time.

"Hopefully it'll give us the club a taste for being at this level.

"We have to walk before we can run, but to try to sustain success is the next thing.

"We've done it, now it's just a sense of joy.”

For Margaret Ferguson, 47, who only started supporting the club six or seven years ago, “it's unreal”.

Barely audible over a choir of hoarse male voices shouting “CHAMPIONES!” she said: “It was really, really good first half – a bit feisty.

"Crusaders had a player sent off which had been well and truly deserved; they don't call them ‘The Hatchetmen’ for nothing!

"But the better team came out in the end, and the results speak for themselves.”

She had been invited to watch a game by a friend around the same time Larne was beginning to rise from the doldrums, and “just fell in love with the club” (now her son Caleb plays for the under-13s squad).

Mrs Ferguson remembers her friend “making sandwiches and sausage rolls for the boys” on the team.

Since then, the club has gone full pro, paying all its players full-time wages.

"The club were starting from the bottom,” she said. "Now they've a chef."

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