OLLIE Horgan has issued a stark warning that Finn Harps must attract ‘substantial investment’ over the winter months.
Horgan, in his sixth season in charge, has Harps to Premier Division survival with his third success through the play-offs.
“It sounds being a killjoy but, unless things change we’ll be in the exact same position next year or we’ll have been relegated straight away,” Horgan told Donegal Daily/Donegal Sport Hub in a frank interview after the game.
“We need to kick on off the pitch if we want to be a Premier Division club. There are only so many times you can go to the well. Unless we can get investment and people to buy into this club, it’s not going to happen.”
Horgan has managed, on a budget dwarfed by their Premier peers, to keep the Donegal club among the big guns.
However, the St Eunan’s College schoolteacher says that Harps need to seek external investment in the club.
“We’re talking about the corporate end, the multi national companies, the small businesses,” the Harps boss said.
“Now is the time that we have to work. If it’s me or someone else, we have to get off our backsides to drive and try and get sponsors and people in.
“Unless that happens, we will be relegated or, at best, in this exact situation and I’m the worst in the world.”
Horgan twice won promotion with Harps via the play-offs and also kept them in the Premier Division in 2016.
He said: “That outweighs any of the nights that we got promoted. We weren’t pretty, but we were dogged. That achievement, without doubt, is more difficult to achieve than getting promoted.”
Listen to the full interview below …
