Kevin McHugh's Departure from Finn Harps: A Call for Change

Kevin McHugh doesn’t raise his voice often. When he does, Finn Harps usually listen.

This time, he’s walked away.

The club legend has broken his silence on his departure from the Finn Park dugout, delivering a blistering assessment of what has gone on behind the scenes and accusing key figures at the club of crossing “lines” he can no longer ignore.

A club servant pushed too far

McHugh is not some passing figure in Ballybofey. He is woven into the place.

He made his senior debut for Harps in August 1998 in a League Cup tie against Fanad United. Across two spells, he scored 186 goals in 439 games. Since 2017, he has run the Finn Harps Academy. In April 2025, after Darren Murphy’s exit, he stepped into the first-team hot seat, doubling up as manager and academy boss through a turbulent 15 months.

He knows the chaos. He’s lived it for nearly three decades.

“Here, after nearly three decades, I am well hardened to the mayhem and nonsense that happens around this club in a normal season, and how you have to just roll sleeves up and get on with things,” he said in a statement to Donegal Daily.

This time, he decided he couldn’t just get on with it.

“Having pieced things together over the past few days, lines have been crossed way beyond what I am prepared to let slide.”

‘Lack of honesty, decency and support’

The breaking point, McHugh insists, was not results. It was people.

Harps have endured a grim spell on the pitch, sliding to the bottom of the First Division. Budgets were slashed. In the last six weeks alone, Max Johnston, Idir Zerrouk, Perrault Tokam, Daniel De Lacerda and Temi Ajibola all left. McHugh was left trying to steady a sinking ship with fewer and fewer tools.

He was willing to take the hit for that.

“I was more than prepared to take a hit in-terms of my own reputation for the club with two hands tied behind my back whilst doubling up with first team and academy roles to help us in a tough period,” he said.

What he wasn’t prepared to accept, he says, was how he and his staff were treated by the hierarchy.

“I am extremely disappointed in the chairman and a few of his close board members that are supposed to be directing this football club,” McHugh said.

“Their behaviour over the past few weeks in particular, because of the lack of honesty, decency and the lack of support shown towards myself and my staff during a period when we needed it most.”

For a man who openly admits he understands the “ugly nature of football,” that is a damning verdict.

Standing up for his staff

McHugh makes it clear he did not go looking for a public row. But he also makes it clear he feels he owes something to the people who stood with him.

The 46-year-old says he has been forced to speak out “to show support for my staff who have shown nothing but full on commitment, professionalism and dignity throughout all of this and deserved much better treatment from the people involved.”

He doesn’t dress it up.

“Lesser men would have walked months ago with the conditions we were left in to compete at this level,” he said.

Yet he and his staff stayed, he insists, out of loyalty to those on the pitch and in the stands.

“We had too much time for the players and supporters who showed up to Finn Park and away grounds each week to walk out on them. People deserve better.”

The message is sharp: the players, the staff, the supporters did their part. Others, in his view, did not.

A club at a crossroads

While Harps announced on Sunday night that McHugh would move into a new role “as part of the club's transition to a professional structure,” he says there is nothing concrete on that front.

The immediate future of Finn Harps may not lie with the current boardroom powerbrokers anyway.

McHugh has already held talks with prospective new owner Freddy Gonzalez. The Filipino entrepreneur’s proposed takeover is expected to go before shareholders in the coming weeks, a potential watershed moment for a club long stuck in survival mode.

McHugh paints a very different picture of that possible new era.

He says Gonzalez has walked him through “short and long-term plans” and understands that McHugh needs time before discussing any role under a new regime.

“Whether I decide to be part of this journey or not, there is certainly exciting times ahead for this brilliant football club when Freddie does come on-board,” McHugh said.

“What I can also say, is the direction the club will go under him is hugely positive and what I like most, he has complete clarity in his plans.”

From a man who has just accused the current leadership of lacking honesty and support, that word “clarity” lands heavily.

From survival to development?

McHugh’s relationship with Finn Harps runs deeper than contracts and titles. It is years of bus journeys, muddy pitches, late-night meetings, academy sessions, and goals that dragged the club through countless seasons.

That is why his parting words carry more hope than bitterness.

“I am delighted for each and every fan, current and past volunteer and staff members who have gone through the mill in some shape or form down through the years for this club, to eventually, in their lifetime be hopefully be able to watch Finn Harps FC come out of survival mode and into development mode.”

A line has been crossed for Kevin McHugh. He has stepped away from the dugout, and he may or may not step back in under new ownership.

The bigger question now hangs over Finn Park: as the old guard is challenged and a potential new era looms, will the club finally match the loyalty of its greatest servant with the structure and standards he has spent a lifetime fighting for?