OBITUARY: Finbarr Flood, former Shelbourne FC player and chairman
The phrase which springs irresistibly to mind when considering the many strands in the life of Finbarr Flood — goalkeeper, chairman of Shelbourne Football Club, managing director of Guinness and chairman of the Labour Court — is one which would have had its most literal application when he was operating between the sticks: he was a safe pair of hands.
Even, indeed, when one of those hands should have rendered him hors de combat. In 2006, the Dublin-born Flood – who was widely mourned when he died in July aged 77 — recalled in an interview how, playing for Shels in the FAI Cup semi-final in 1960, he had broken three bones in his hand. That should automatically have ruled him out of the final, of course, but with the club’s reserve keeper already injured, Flood had no option but to take to the Dalymount Park pitch on the big day, the damaged hand heavily strapped.
