{"id":9480,"date":"2024-08-30T12:07:50","date_gmt":"2024-08-30T12:07:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/uefa-conference-league-kenny-bruce-celebrates-larne-breaking-glass-ceiling\/"},"modified":"2024-08-30T12:07:50","modified_gmt":"2024-08-30T12:07:50","slug":"uefa-conference-league-kenny-bruce-celebrates-larne-breaking-glass-ceiling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/uefa-conference-league-kenny-bruce-celebrates-larne-breaking-glass-ceiling\/","title":{"rendered":"Uefa Conference League: Kenny Bruce celebrates Larne &#8216;breaking glass ceiling&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Larne owner Kenny Bruce says his club&#8217;s success in the Uefa Conference League will benefit the entire Irish League.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Andy Ryan hit a hat-trick at Inver Park as Larne <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/football\/live\/cvgxjwqypp6t\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">beat Lincoln Red Imps 4-3 on aggregate <\/a>to become the first Irish League club to make the group or league stages of a major European club competition.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It breaks through that glass ceiling &#8211; people have to do something first and Larne have now done this for the first time for Northern Irish football,&#8221; said Bruce, whose investment kick-started Larne&#8217;s renaissance. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The Northern Irish football family has been brilliant too, letting us postpone games to give us the best opportunity to qualify because every club in the country will now benefit from the exposure, finances and solidarity money. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;This gives everyone a fresh impetus.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Tiernan Lynch&#8217;s side were reduced to 10 men and came from behind before winning Thursday night&#8217;s second leg 3-1 at a rapturous Inver Park, with chairman Gareth Clements there to watch the drama unfold.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s monumental, it&#8217;s ground-breaking for the Irish League and it&#8217;s groundbreaking for Larne &#8211; we did it the Larne way, we made it hard for ourselves but the boys fought like Trojans,&#8221; said Clements.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;There were a few tears &#8211; we&#8217;ve worked very very hard and dreamed of European football. We got that and we had a five-year plan to make the group stages. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We&#8217;re two years into that and we&#8217;ve done it so I think there&#8217;s going to be a few happy people around here for the next couple of days.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/articles\/ce81wj02859o\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Larne owner Kenny Bruce says his club&#8217;s success in the Uefa Conference League will benefit the entire Irish League. Andy Ryan hit a hat-trick at Inver Park as Larne beat Lincoln Red Imps 4-3 on aggregate to become the first Irish League club to make the group or league stages of a major European club [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9481,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[4154,1047,4855,2754,1617,260,4854,1618,206,3001],"class_list":["post-9480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-n-ireland","tag-breaking","tag-bruce","tag-ceiling","tag-celebrates","tag-conference","tag-glass","tag-kenny","tag-larne","tag-league","tag-uefa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9480"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9482,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9480\/revisions\/9482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}