Carnlough man Brendan Rodgers, a former Northern Ireland schoolboy international and manager of Chelsea reserves, is the current manager of the Premier League side Liverpool F.C..
It was boosted in the late 1970s by the defection of a prominent Protestant Larne SDLP councillor, John Turnley, later the party chairman, who was killed in 1980 in Carnlough, County Antrim by an attack claimed by the Ulster Defence Association.