Finn Harps

History

Finn Harps was formed in 1954 as a joint venture between two groups. One, the Donegal Hill-Building Association (DHBA), were attempting to make the various routes between Donegal and Derry impassable during winter, thus limiting the number of Derry people entering Donegal. For their part, the people of Derry had long decided that the most sensible way of dealing with the DHBA was to just mine the passes, and periodically blow up the entire border, generally taking half the DHBA with it.

The other group involved in the founding of Harps was a group of publicans who were sneaking Harp across the border in drums of Red diesel. There were substantial problems involved in this. Harp and diesel are fairly difficult to separate once they’re mixed. Fortunately, it was found that the mix doesn’t taste all that different from pure Harp, so the problem was considered solved. Stig has yet to find out why they thought that adding the diesel would help the smuggling in the first place. Smuggling operations were also complicated by the presence of feral sheep and by some idiots who were walling off passes with additional hills. These were sorted out by paying the people of Derry to periodically mine the passes and blow up the entire border.

For their part, the DHBA found that the regular loss of so many friends to massive, inexplicable explosions in the mountains left them with an exceptional thirst, which they sated by drinking the Harp supplied to them by the Harp-smuggling publicans. This generally ran out of the local stuff and into the, ah, ’export’ barrels. Mourning lost comrades, they failed to notice the taste of the diesel. This activity funded the kick-backs from the publicans to the people of Derry, who...

Anyway, let’s not get sidetracked. It was fourteen years before Harps found a suitably level piece of ground on which to play football, at which point they won the FAI Junior Cup. A new hill was commissioned in celebration, and the FAI was forced to let Harps compete in the Intermediate Cup the following season. Defeat there didn’t deter them though and Harps applied for membership of the League of Ireland. Their application was accepted by the FAI, who assumed that this ’Donegal’ must be somewhere far away, thus proactively bringing the league forward by shifting the paradigm. For their part, the other clubs in the league voted for Harps in the hope that their connections with heavily armed Derry people could help them cope with the FAI.

Harps played their first league game on 17th August 1969. They choked for the big occasion, losing 10-2 to Rovers. This didn’t set much of a pattern for the immediate future, but Harps later tendency to choke whenever confronted with opportunity can be traced back to this very day. The seventies was a something of a grace period. UCD hadn’t yet joined the league, so everyone was pretty slack. Harps had it pretty good for the decade. Three times they were the second least rubbish team in the league and they even beat Pats in the Cup. That meant four European appearances, against Aberdeen, Derby, Everton and Bursaspor. Note: I said four European games, not eight. Having beaten Harps by a cricket score in the first legs, these teams all defaulted the second legs, resulting in 3-0 defeats that counted for nothing.

The 1980s were far less kind to Harps. UCD’s entry into the league had raised the bar. With a team doctor and people who can read the rulebook, the college proved a tough opponent to crack. Kicking an opposition player to injure him resulted in red cards and the team doctor meant he’d probably even walk again. With the creation of the first division, Harps top flight run was over. In an attempt to rebuild the team with footballers, the club went through a string of managers. Unfortunately, each time they sacked the manager, they replaced him with Potsy McGroaner, who would find that his predecessor had left him with rubbish to work with.

Eventually, he managed to set the tone for Harps’ next decade or so. 93/94 and 94/95 both saw Harps choke in the play-off. 95/96 saw McGroaner sacked and replaced by Dermot ’twelve-club’ Keely, who promptly got them promoted and left when the committee refused to sell the club to the giant Russian teddy bear of his choice. He was replaced by MacGyver who assembled a new squad from a length of wire, a car battery, pocket lint and a duck. He managed to squeeze some good performances out of them for a few years, but then the battery went a bit flat, the pocket lint kept putting on weight and the duck just stopped taking the whole thing seriously before being garotted by the over-competitive wire. After that disappointing start to the 00/01 season, securing just one point in the first seven games, MacGyver resigned. Stig wishes that the vile Doolo had been so eager to leave UCD after he managed just one in his first nine in 2003.

Since then, Harps have seen relegation, a quarter of a million in debt (now mostly paid off), five managers (none of whom was McGroaner), choked in a play-off, taken advantage of UCD’s generous ’we don’t really want to win this division, sure promotion’s enough’ attitude to get promoted again, gotten relegated again and fallen into the sea as years of massive explosions on the eastern border finally paid off.