Finn Harps Thread

yet another victory for Harps.

no joy for Kevin on the scoring front though he went close twice.

he should be close to BB's record in about three seasons.

<snip> ah now really your about long enough to know ya can't do that

from FBTN on the Harps forum...:(

SAVE OUR CLUB!
Folks, I write this entirely from my own personal point of view. I am not acting as mouthpiece for anyone and my only agenda is that we still have a football club in the coming weeks.

We are in serious danger of going out of football. That is the bottom line. I don’t know if people don’t care or just don’t realise how bad things are.
There is a SGM this Sunday in Jackson’s for shareholders where a decision may be reached to wind up the club. We need to come up with 40K from somewhere in the next few weeks so we can get our licensing. If we don’t have a license, we will lose our funding for the new stadium. We are so close to getting into a new ground that will be a re-birth for Finn Harps and the county; it would be an unmitigated disaster for the pin to be pulled.

As fans we HAVE to play our part. The Harps have come through some seriously tough times in their history, the recession of the 80’s and the huge debt and formation of the co-op in 2000/01. There are many people who made huge financial and personal sacrifices to keep the show on the road throughout those years right up to present day. They pulled us back from the brink on numerous occasions. Some of them are still involved, some of them moved away from the club for one reason or another and some of them sadly are no longer with us. But they kept a senior football club in Donegal for 42 years, literally through blood, sweat and tears.

It is now the turn of our generation and we can’t let Finn Harps die on our watch. For many of us it is part of our identity and culture and if we lose that we will never ever get it back. There is no point in thinking in a few weeks, months or even years from now that we should have done more to save it. We need to act now and it is achievable.

Many clubs the world over have been saved at the final hour, normally by their fans. Sometimes as here in Ireland, clubs have been taken over entirely by the supporters and turned into a successful clubs.

Most football fans now see this as the way forward and these are normally the most rewarding clubs to be involved in. You just have to take a look in England at AFC Wimbledon and F.C. United of Manchester. Their successes have spawned other fan based clubs like AFC Liverpool, AFC Rushden & Diamonds etc

Is it a coincidence that the newly crowned champions of both the Premier and the First Division here, namely Shamrock Rovers and Cork City are 100% fan owned clubs? Both clubs were in administration a few years ago and their fans fought tooth and nail to save them. They are now both proud and worthy champions.

We are in an extremely unique position in that we as fans already own our club and it is up to us, the fans and supporters of Finn Harps to save Finn Harps. Not anyone else.

It struck a chord with me that a large amount of Shamrock Rovers fans care so much about the Harps. 35 Rovers fans bought draw tickets online between Friday and Sunday.I’m not sure how many were sold this week. They have it on their forum and their Facebook page encouraging other Rovers fans to give us money. They are talking about having a collection for us tonight at their Europa League game against PAOK.

If our own fans have as much passion to keep us in football as the Rovers lads do then I think we’ll be okay. Finn Harps is not everyone’s cup of tea in Donegal. We know that. We are far from perfect and have had some real heartbreakers over the years. But we are the eternal underdog, we keep coming back and that is probably part of our appeal.

It won’t be easy but can do this. We need to get organised, we need to get money and we need to pull together in the one direction.

There are already a few fundraisers organised. Everyone can – and must – help in some way. Obviously not everyone is in a position to buy tickets and support events every other week. But you can encourage as many family and friends to buy. There are many of our younger supporters currently in Australia, Canada, America etc. The Internet is our friend! Let’s get onto them and ask them to help so that there is a club still for them in Donegal for when they come home. Hopefully we can build some momentum among our own people and go into the Christmas and New Year holidays knowing we will have a club to support in 2012.

I’m not sure about the format of this meeting on Sunday or what the agenda is but the picture will be much clearer next week on where we are at and what we need to do.

For the moment we need anyone that cares about Finn Harps to sit and take notice of how close we are to going out of business.