On the day of Ger Brennan’s red card against Galway in the league, everything else was a tree falling in a forest. This was the game that relegated the Dubs to Division Two but compared to the ruckus that followed their manager’s dismissal, even that felt like a minor detail. Needless to say, the gameplay itself never stood a chance.
It’s probably no surprise then that Rob Finnerty’s solo concerto that afternoon didn’t quite get the spotlight it might have otherwise. It wasn’t just his eight-point return or his match-winning two-pointer that stood out – a couple of scores in particular coming down the stretch would have stopped traffic on another day.
Finnerty turned 28 last month and has always been a beautiful kicker off his left foot. It’s a full decade ago now that he started a Galway club final for Salthill-Knocknacarra while still a minor, kicking four points in defeat against a rampant Corofin. And though he has flourished in the years since, the most persistent criticism of him has been his one-footedness. He might not be all left foot but he’s enough for defenders to know it’s the way to bet.
Yet here he was against Dublin, with Galway five points down and only 11 minutes left on the clock, sending Davy Byrne one way with a left-foot dummy solo and finishing from the other with a lovely right-foot curler. And there he was four minutes later, pulling off the exact same move, this time with Eoin Murchan as the straight man.
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That’s two corner backs, with 13 All-Ireland medals between them, turned into pretzels because they didn’t buy the idea of Rob Finnerty having a good enough right foot to split the posts from the right side of the arc. Not a bad club to add to the bag in his eighth season on tour.
“I think it’s a huge thing,” says former Galway defender and Finnerty’s current club manager Finian Hanley. “Rob would say himself that it’s something he’s worked on, his right-hand side. Over the winter I believe he has been doing that, just to give himself that extra dimension.
“It’s a sign of maturity. To be playing as well as he has been over the past few seasons and to be hearing people telling him he’s brilliant and yet he wants to go after that extra two or three per cent to make himself a really top player. He’s shown it this year in the league that he can kick scores off his right so that changes how defenders see him.
“Now you can’t commit to him at all because he can kill you with a jink. And whereas before, he would be using that jink to make space on his left, now he can go either way. That’s really, really dangerous for corner backs. You’re going to see him double-teamed at times now, which will hopefully make more space for the other Galway forwards as well.”
Finnerty has quietly become one of the most consistent forwards in the country. He has been Galway’s top scorer in both of the past two championships and in this year’s league. For all the chatter around the new cadets that got their sea legs under them in Pádraic Joyce’s side this spring, Finnerty was by a distance their player of the league.
Clearly, something has shifted. Having spent most of his Galway career in the shadow of Damien Comer and Shane Walsh, Finnerty has gone from softening the blow of their various injury-enforced absences to driving the move to a new reality. That he hasn’t had a lot of choice in the matter doesn’t make it any less impressive.
Rewind the tape four years to the 2022 All-Ireland final against Kerry. Walsh and Comer were the Malin and Mizen of that Galway attack back then. Both of them made the full-forward line of the All Star team, Walsh was the championship’s top scorer. Finnerty had a decent year and was an All Star nominee for the first time but he was taken off early in the second half of the final when everything was in the balance.
Comer was 28 playing that final, Walsh was 29. Galway have played 54 matches in league and championship since then – Walsh and Comer have completed 70 minutes together just twice. Walsh has played significantly more than Comer but he still only made it to the final whistle twice in last year’s championship. Galway were always going to need another hero.
“I think Rob has seen the light over the past two or three years in how to go to the top level,” says Hanley. “He has always had a lot of talent but he has added that bit of strength, physicality and leadership. He’s doing all the things a great player should do, in terms of taking games by the scruff of the neck.
“The absence of some of the bigger players and better-known players in Galway has probably helped Robert a little bit. You never want to lose a Damien or a Shane but it has meant he has come to the fore and has gone after that role.”
Over the past four seasons, the only forwards in Ireland who have received more All Star nominations than Finnerty are David Clifford, Paudie Clifford and Seán O’Shea, who’ve made the longlist every year since 2022. Finnerty is one of only two forwards to be nominated in three of those seasons, with the other being Con O’Callaghan. He has one All Star to his name, the same as Walsh and Comer.
“I met him over Christmas,” says Hanley. “Robert had a back injury that kept him out of the club championship up until the quarter-final but he did a huge amount of work on it over the winter. And that time I was talking to him, all he was focused on was making sure his back was ready for the first round of the league.
“He knew that a lot of lads were going to miss time and that Pádraic was bringing in new bodies like Fionn McDonagh and Oisín Mac Donnacha. And it was really a case of: ‘I need to be ready for the first round of the league here, I need to be the leader.’
“And you can see it in him. He wants the ball all the time. He wants to add variation to his play. There’s a maturity there for all to see. Robert is a guy who just loves the game. He adores it. And he knows there’s only a short window.”
Finnerty is nobody’s understudy any more and how he handles it will be one of the stories of Galway’s year.
So far, so good.
