When Niall Finnegan laid down the law

"I was much more a kick up the ass kind of guy," recalls former Galway star of 1998 semi-final win over Derry

Galway’s Niall Finnegan in action in the Connacht SFC at Páirc Smárgaid in Ruislip, London, in June 1999. Picture: Damien Eagers/Sportsfile

“It was a pressure kick. But the best comes out of people sometimes when the pressure is on”  

- John O’Mahony describing Niall Finnegan’s equalising free in the 1998 Connacht SFC final v Roscommon 

“A Year ‘Til Sunday”.

But for Niall Finnegan, 1998 may never have happened for Galway. It wasn’t just that precious kick in Tuam: of the 1-18 he accumulated across that heady championship, so many of the scores were key ones.

Only the outstanding feats of Declan Browne denied him an All-Star award but if there was one blot in the copybook it was the All-Ireland semi-final against Derry. Scoring one point from play, Derry captain Kieran McKeever had the better of him. Not to the same magnitude as Tomás Mannion against Joe Brolly at the other end of the field, which prompted Brian Mullins to substitute Brolly early in the second half.

“The game kind of passed me by a bit and I think I had a trip to the psychologist after that,” he recalls fondly about Bill Cogan, the Glasgow-born guru John O’Mahony had leaned on just as he did previously with Mayo. 

“I was much more a kick up the ass kind of guy than an arm around the shoulder. I’d say the vast majority need the arm nowadays but I was sent off to boarding school for two years, too fond of the nightlife in Salthill.

“John O’Mahony was so ahead of his time. In Dublin, he had us staying in The Berkeley Court where there were more American tourists than Galway supporters and we also had access to a very highly-trained sports psychologist Billy.

“Mick Byrne was our physio and he doubled as a sports psychologist and everything else. He had a line, ‘You’re there to miss them as well as to score them.’ He was a great positive influence like that. I’d a very good semi-final in ‘95 against Tyrone (Finnegan scored seven points) so I was disappointed but thankfully I was able to regroup for the final.”

Four second half points including two from play in that thrilling early second half riposte against Kildare, Finnegan certainly did that but he wasn’t around for the same fixture against Derry three years later. Living in Dublin from the early 1990s where he was working as a solicitor from 1995 (claiming a senior county title with St Sylvesters a year later), life outside football had become more demanding.

Finnegan is a partner in a law firm. Pic: George Tewkesbury/Sportsfile

“I qualified as a solicitor the Friday before the All-Ireland final in ‘98,” says Finnegan, now a partner in successful Brannigan Cosgrove Finnegan firm. “I had been doing exams up to the semi-final. It was tough going but we were on a roll.

“I put the shoulder to the wheel big time in 2000 with a lot of early sessions, weights, I was at every challenge match. I think we played Clare five times and maybe the well was dry for me. I was a decent ball player but I wasn’t ever an athlete. The game was changing. Within two or three years, you had Ricey McMenamin playing corner-back and you could have been trying to hold him scoreless, him scoring more than you.

“I probably wasn’t experienced enough to set up a practice in Galway. It would have been less of an ordeal but at that stage I’d been playing for five years for Galway from Dublin. I turned 30 in 2001. Fifteen of my friends decided to get married that year so there were 15 weddings that I wouldn’t have got to otherwise. I missed the lads but I didn’t miss the daily slog or the adverse impact it was having on me developing a professional career.”

Watching as Galway annihilated Meath in the 2001 final, of course there were pangs of regret but he was thankful for 1998. 

“2001 was probably a sweeter victory for Johno and some of the lads. It was bittersweet for me but you’ll always have the Ciarán Whelans of this world who played for so long and missed out on an All-Ireland at either end of their career but thankfully I wasn’t in that category.

“To be honest, I was fortunate to win a Celtic Cross. Things hadn’t been going well in Galway in ‘95 to ‘97 really and a lot of guys would have packed it in. The fact I was training as opposed to fully qualified, I could still go at it.”

How Finnegan fell in with Sylvesters wasn’t because he lived in Malahide - “I couldn’t afford to live in the area, probably still couldn’t” he laughs – but then Galway manager Val Daly’s insistence he be supervised. 

"He didn’t trust that I would train prodigiously on my own so he entrusted his good friend Brian Talty to look after me.” 

The 1996 victory over Erins Isle was a first SFC title for the club as it was for his native Salthill-Knocknacarra when he helped them beat Corofin six years earlier.

He continues to help out teams in the capital on occasion but does bemoan some of what passes for football at the elite level. 

“For someone who played in the 90s and under-age in the 80s, a lot of what is played these days is anathema. I cannot understand a lot of it. Outside of Galway-Armagh, it hasn’t been a great season.”

He still gets home regularly and keeps in touch with his ‘98 team-mates both socially and professionally. “Any time we meet, we pick up where we left it because there is such a special bond. There is that chemistry that comes from having won something big.”

As he sees how his old colleagues Pádraic Joyce and John Divilly have prepared Galway, Finnegan has a good feeling about this evening. 

“They have the edge in experience – Shane Walsh, Damien Comer, Paul Conroy. It’s Derry again in a semi-final and there seems to be an element of what we had in ‘98 with seasoned players mixed with the Sigerson Cup winners and an innovative management team.

“Galway can’t give away goals like we have against Roscommon and Armagh. We can’t somehow magic up a towering full-back, Seán Kelly has filled in well there but all things being equal I’d be fairly confident providing they’re not too wrecked after the Armagh game.”