Rob's keeping it in the family

No more than Rob Finnerty, him a teacher at Scoil Bhríde in Shantalla and so having little more to worry about than football this holiday season, I too had a small bit of time on my hands at the end of last Thursday’s press briefing with the Galway senior football team at Pearse Stadium - and so took to counting footballs.

The pitch was already laid out in advance of the squad’s training session later that evening. 55 size 5 O’Neill’s were awaiting the 32 players. Maybe there’s a man or woman whose only job is just to keep all those balls pumped because according to the manager Pádraic Joyce, there is 30 of a backroom staff involved in his team’s bid to win this year’s All-Ireland SFC as well.

Rob Finnerty, like his dad Anthony did for Mayo in 1989 and 1996, is preparing to appear in his second All-Ireland senior final and it’s probably fair to say, is shouldering more expectation than when Galway ended a 21-year wait to reach the final in 2022, where ultimately they fell short to Kerry. That’s because the Salthill/Knocknacarra clubman is the Tribesmen’s top scorer in this year’s championship, with his 1-32 amounting to seven points more than what has been contributed by fellow free-taker Shane Walsh, each having started eight of Galway’s nine games to date.

It's quite the tally from Finnerty considering that in the five previous years since making his senior championship debut against London in 2019 he had scored 17 points in total.

“I suppose physically, it does take that good few years to become a senior player after minor,” says the 25-year-old who featured for Galway in the 2016 All-Ireland minor final and the 2017 All-Ireland U21 final.

“It took that few years of gym work and probably learning small little nuggets; minor football is a lot different to senior football in terms of how teams set-up as well. I had a lot to learn.

“You’re always looking for ways to improve and if ever I spoke to my management teams, they’d always have said that physically I could get that bit stronger. In the off-season that was always something I’d be looking at.” 

There’s no disguising the influence that Finnerty Snr has had in his son’s progression to becoming one of the top forwards in the country. The Moygownagh native played no fewer than 74 times for the Mayo senior football team between 1981 and 1996 and transferred all that knowledge to a coaching role at Salthill/Knocknacarra where, as Rob Finnerty explained, Anthony managed his underage teams all the way up to when they won back-to-back Connacht minor club titles.

“He had a massive impact, working on my skills with me all the time. With Salthill the whole way up we’d have won everything.” 

Another member of that team was Galway midfielder cum centre-forward John Maher who Rob describes as his “best friend growing up”.

“John was always a massive cog in our team. He came straight into the senior team with Salthill and had an impact straight away. He’s always been a serious footballer.

“He was asked into Galway panels and didn’t commit straight away because he was doing different things but from the day he came into the senior panel, he’s had an impact.

“It’s special now that we’re hopefully going to go on and win an All-Ireland together,” says Finnerty.

There aren’t too many households where father and son can each lay claim to having played in two All-Ireland SFC finals but, says Rob, discussions in the Finnerty home are rarely focused on the past.

“We would talk about football but it’s more about things nowadays, we wouldn’t really talk about ’89 or the past much to be fair. [Dad] doesn’t really bring it up or talk about himself too often, we’d be more talking about games that are happening now, even just local club games.

“We both obviously have a big interest in football but a lot of it would be what’s happening at the moment.” 

One thing that Mayo and Galway football do seem to have in common is the good old rumour mill and Finnerty has no idea from where the tall tale emanated that he is booked in for knee surgery once this season is complete.

“Some stories just seem to grow legs,” he said, with no pun intended.

“A few people have said to me that they’ve heard I’m getting surgery, but definitely not. [The knee] is all good, it’s all cleared up.

“Obviously, there’s no denying that I was injured there for a while, you could tell from the tape I suppose. But luckily we have a great medical team and the management have helped with managing the load, and I’m back to full fitness now.

“The strapping was only there to prevent me doing any further damage but I wasn’t necessarily playing with any real pain.” 

The bookmakers have installed Galway as slight favourites to win next Sunday, perhaps reading more into their quarter-final victory over last year’s champions Dublin than into Armagh’s surprise semi-final triumph over Kerry.

“It was obviously great to beat Dublin but while it might sound a small bit cliched to say, we treat every game the same way, so it doesn’t really matter who we’re coming up against, we feel like we if we can perform to the best of our ability that we’re a match for anyone," Finnerty concluded.