The figureheads of Larne and Linfield, the sides who have accounted for the last six league titles, came to their distinctly different clubs in distinctly different circumstances only to recently arrive at the same conclusion.
Healy, the record goal-scorer for the Northern Ireland men’s national team, returned home after a playing career that started at Manchester United and included spells with Leeds United, Preston North End and Fulham.
In returning to the same Windsor Park ground where he served his country with such distinction, the former striker was taking on a job where winning was not an ambition but an expectation.
Lynch, in contrast, was once on the books of Cliftonville but built his coaching career first by helping his brother with the north Belfast side’s under-age sides and then as an assistant to Eddie Patterson at Glentoran. When he took the job at Larne, the side who had then never won a league title were in the lower reaches of the second tier.
The back-to-back top flight titles that have followed were facilitated by an unprecedented shift in the structure of the club bankrolled by its owner, the online property agency Purplebricks co-founder Kenny Bruce.
Professionalism is a recent concept in the Irish Premiership – both Linfield and Larne are among the league’s full-time teams, though some clubs remain part-time and others employ a hybrid model – with the change meaning managers no longer have to leave home to test themselves in that environment.
Job stability and opportunities to showcase their managerial talents in European competition likely have factored in for both men too.
In the short-term, Larne and Linfield will feel more confident about the title race that lies ahead for having their manager remain in the dug-out. While it is easy to point to the financial strength of both clubs, one only has to look elsewhere around the league to be reminded that higher wage bills and transfer budgets are no guarantee of managerial success.
Further down the line, Healy had spoken in the past of ambitions to manage in England and Scotland but more recently described himself as “content” at Linfield and talked of the “sway” his family would have in any call to leave.
Although Lynch is yet to address the media since his own decision, Larne players have already admitted to the inevitability that, should the success at Inver Park continue, more clubs will come calling for their manager and that he will ultimately move on.
In the case of both however, after rejecting advances that would once have been viewed as a step up, some may wonder if not now, when?