Finnerty out to erase some bad memories

ON THE fifteenth day of August three years ago he realised that the thrill was gone. Not just that but he wanted to get sick too. He sat in the Mayo dressingroom and thought of tunnelling his way out. Maybe leaving Croke Park with a hood over his head. So much shame, disgust and dishonesty. It had to end there. No energy left for recriminations.

"To lose an All Ireland semifinal by 20 points," he says, "that's something that just shouldn't happen. John Maughan wouldn't send out any team that could lose that way. Neither would John O'Mahoney. I don't think there was an honest effort put in by everyone that day. Croke Park can be very lonely on days like that. Anyway, I just didn't have the heart to continue."

The horror of it is still fresh. He speaks about it all as if it happened just yesterday.

Who would have had the heart to continue? Anthony Finnerty came on as a sub at half time that day. The rout was well in progress but Mayo rallied for about 15 minutes after the break, scoring three times with just one reply from Cork. Then they conceded a goal, dropped their heads and conceded three more before the end. Handed over 3-3 in the last four minutes to be precise.

"We didn't have our best team on the field that day," says Finnerty "I don't know why. We had better players sitting in the stands and on the bench. We all knew that. We played a last trial game the Sunday before and the B team beat the A team by nine points. One of the B team played in the semi final. That made you think. In hindsight it was a total disaster."

A month after that semi final he got a call asking him if he would like to play in a trial game which might shape the squad for the winter ahead. Sensing that Jack O'Shea was itching to have a clear out and with the sour taste of August still lingering Finnerty politely declined. Nobody twisted his arm.

After a very short while he stopped thinking about inter county football altogether.

"When you are in the scene with the lads and the football and the training you wonder how you would ever live without it. But you do. You fill in the time quite easily. When I finished up the fun was going out of it. That day in Croke Park the fun was gone. There was nothing funny about any of it."

Hard that it ended that way. Through the late Eighties they hadn't just been a team they had been "best friends." A group welded together in good times and bad times and riveted into a unit by several larger than life characters.

By the time Finnerty had got out of UCG as a young fella he had acquired the nickname which would tag him throughout his senior career. Larry. Fat Larry.

He summered in America in 1982 and came back to campus a little bit, ahem, more filled out then when he had left.

That October the pop pickers of the world made Zoom from Fat Larry and His Band the only big hit which Fat Larry and His Band would ever enjoy. Finnerty was christened Fat Larry. A teammate made sure the papers got to know the nickname and print gave it permanence.

So when Finnerty wintered badly he would be Fat Larry and come the summer when the pounds were shed and the speed was on tap he was simply Larry.

A string of Galway Sigerson teams allegedly given to indolence were christened The Larrys in Finnerty's honour in the following years.

He seldom wintered well, even through the good times but come summer when the work was done and the sod was dry he could produce. They rode the wave until it crashed on the reef of county board politics.

"Where did it go wrong? The first mistake was letting John O'Mahony go. That was crazy given the work that John had done and was in the middle of doing. We will never know but I think web would have won a national title by now if John had stayed. We would have been thereabouts anyway.

After that the dirt and debris started to fly. Mayo players took part in the most celebrated car push in the history of the game and lost one of the worst All Ireland semi finals in the history of the game. Then Brian McDonald walked the plank, with much prodding from behind.

The following, year they promised to galvanise. Under Jack O'Shea they won a Connacht title almost, from memory. Then the 20 point dismemberment at the hands of Cork was the final notice that the party was over.

"I think Mayo football has had to put up with a lot," says Finnerty now that all is calm again Because we have been to Croke Park more times than most teams in the past 10 years we have taken most of the bad publicity and had press. We have had the high profile defeats so a lot of things were thrown at us and given what problems there were it made us look bad. When we go to Croke Park on Sunday though history isn't going to dent our optimism.

Croke Park on Sunday. Anthony Finnerty can scarcely have thought that he would be making that note in his diary ever again. Yet when his old friend John Maughan took over in Mayo last September he wasn't too surprised to pick up the phone and hear Maughan say: "I've got some plans for you."

Finnerty was at a bit of a crossroads at the time, heading to Dublin for a year in college studying for a diploma in special education. The first thing that struck him was the fact that time was no longer elastic.

"I thought to myself that there was no way I could tell Grainne that I was heading off to Dublin five days a week, leaving her with Ailbhe (the baby) and then heading to Mayo for the weekend to train with the county team."

When you are 32, however, opportunity will knock but won't come around the back and peer in the windows trying to rouse you if you don't answer first time. Anyway it was John Maughan who was doing the knocking.

"Maughan is different. Maughan is persuasive. He understands too. He has small, kids of his own. He allows for that. He is very accommodating."

Finnerty told Maughan that he was interested but that he was heading to Dublin for three terms of study. He would use his time in UCD to test himself in colleges football.

Maughan and his selectors Peter Ford and Tommy O'Malley all know the intensity of the colleges scene. When you are the wrong side of 30 it you can make it there you can make it anywhere. If Finnerty pulled through it would be a bonus to their plans.

Finnerty was granted the winter and the spring to dabble his feet. If things went well he would be back in April. UCD won the Sigerson, Finnerty stormed through the five games, found himselt, back in the red banded Mayo jersey a few months earlier than planned. Found himself scoring 1-3 against Meath in a league quarter final three weeks ago. The thrill of it all, half forgotten, came flooding back now.

"I'm in good shape much earlier in the year than I have ever been before. The intensity of playing Sigerson has given me five championship style games in the spring. I have half the winter done playing practice games in UCD on Kevin Cullen from Kildare. You have to fight your corner if you are going to get anything out of him."

Just as well that he has become accustomed to fighting his corner. Mayo football is in the process of turning a corner. Two accomplished under 21 teams have fleshed out this year's senior panel. The cocktail is attractive.

Half a dozen or so veterans of 1989 shaken in with a splash of sharp youngsters. More than that. Emigration has slowed and more of Mayo's good young players are heading to third level education where they can be held to the game.

"When we beat Meath there was a buzz about the place. Just an expectation. It was a different Meath team back in the Eighties but we could never beat them. The supporters were back, there was a great sense of enjoyment and satisfaction about it all. Things are looking up. We have players with the ability now. In the past we looked at players, not just good players but the cream heading off to America when they were young. Now we are keeping them."

That defeat of Meath reflected a pattern new to Mayo football. Through the winter months, particularly post Christmas when Maughan has subjected his team to the most extraordinarily gruelling fitness programme, Mayo have dragged their weary limbs onto muddy fields and doggedly extracted victories from match after match: A point to spare here, two points to spare there.

There have been times when. I've wondered," says, Finnerty how the lads were going to get through the game never mind winning it. The work we have done wouldn't be conducive to good football on Sundays but we have dug deep every time.

Maughan has a great confidence about himself. That goes through the team. Even though, I would be a friend of his going back a long time I would say as well that he is the most ruthless manager I have ever worked with. Talk about calling a spade a spade. He is tough. He spares nobody. He has given me a harder time than anyone. He sets out his objectives. It's not for the faint hearted but stick with him and the crack is good."

Tomorrow when they face Derry they have nothing to lose. Some of the team have distant memories of bad days in Croke Park but more of the team have no memories at all.

If they win they can ride the league to its conclusion knowing that the Connacht championship doesn't get serious until the end of June. If they lose they can ride home knowing that they have found out a little more about themselves.

"This is what it's all about for us now. Mixing with the big boys squaring up to them and seeing how it feels. There is, so much we can take out of this game and bring home to learn from.

He's sure of a couple of things. They won't lose by 20 points. And football feels good again.

Whatever happened to Fat Larry and His Band anyway?