Gareth Clements: Larne delighted to fulfil Kenny Bruce's dream of Champions League football at Inver Park

In October 2018, Bruce famously stated his desire to have the iconic anthem played at the County Antrim venue and was denied the opportunity last summer when their 4G pitch failed to pass a FIFA test, meaning the tie against Finnish champions HJK was played at Solitude, the home of Cliftonville.

There shouldn’t be any such issue this time around with Larne awarded a UEFA Club Licence earlier this week and chairman Clements says Bruce, who became club owner in 2017, deserves to have his dream realised.

"When we came in, Kenny said 'underplay everything' and then we opened this stadium with a Rangers XI and he went on TV and it was the Champions League music was going to be here!" he laughed. "We all just went up and said 'thanks pal!'.

"Thankfully we've been able to make his wish come true and if there's a man who deserves his wish to come true it's Kenny."

Larne have been able to consistently build on their success by adding key personnel into the playing squad – the likes of Leroy Millar, Lee Bonis, Andy Ryan, Aaron Donnelly and Levi Ives have all had a major impact since arriving at different stages over the past two-and-a-half years – and Clements feels they’re now at a point of fine tuning rather than making drastic changes.

"The one thing we've always been doing is putting down firm building blocks and every year there will be changes made, but we're in a place now where it's tweaking and fine tuning,” he added. "There will be no massive overhaul of the squad.

"We needed those three or four good transfer windows. When we came into the Premiership we had a good starting eleven, but when we looked to the bench we were maybe weak - now we can bring players on and we're not weakening ourselves in any way.

"It took us that period of time but it's tweaking and fine tuning as we go."