So long, Steve, shame we hardly knew you

Sideline Cut:Like many people, I greeted the news of Steve Finnan's retirement with what felt like a brief and almost unnoticeable pang of regret. Insofar as I ever held an opinion on Finnan, I was generally for him on the grounds that while nothing particularly thrilling was likely to happen when the football was in his vicinity, nothing bad would ever happen either. Through a frustrating period for the Republic of Ireland team, Finnan was a rationalist and a soothing presence in a dressing-room filled with emotional men.

It would have been nice, now that he has bid adieu to the green shirt, to have referred to him as Ireland's voice of reason. But I am not sure I ever heard him speak. Then, he never had to. Finnan always seemed like the ideal representation of the kind of player who, as John Giles approvingly notes, "gets on with the job". Whether in the red shirt of Liverpool or playing with Ireland, Finnan seemed to cope with whatever the threat of the day with implacable, existential calm.

He never looked particularly worried but he never looked especially happy either. In fact, he managed to play in football theatres all over the world bearing the expression of a bored librarian who wished he had kept up the bass guitar after all.

That is not to say his mind was elsewhere or he was not fully committed to the cause. He was: he was a grafter, he was technically proficient, and whether facing the likes of Zidane and France or Scunthorpe reserves, he never blinked but set about giving a professional and thorough performance.

He will undoubtedly get what football folk refer to as "a bit of stick" for bowing out of the Ireland scene at a time when the nation is without a manager. At 32 years of age, Finnan could have comfortably nailed down his place in the Ireland defence for another World Cup campaign. He never seemed to have any trouble in getting selected, be it for Liverpool or Ireland. Over the years, he has amassed 50 appearances for Ireland, the quiet man through the raucous eras of McCarthy and Kerr and Steven Staunton.

In the same way as young Steven Ireland appears capable of generating astonishingly provocative comments from everyone from Don Givens to his grandmother, Finnan possesses that rare talent of earning loyal silence from everyone who knows him.

In disaster movies, Finnan would have been one of those characters that know how to make it through until the end. If he had been in Mutiny on the Bounty, he would have made it to Pitcairn, sticking with Fletcher Christian, fighting when fighting was needed, saying very little and then settling down to a life of tequilas and bad music.

Finnan remained an individual who did what was necessary to function in an alpha-male team environment. One imagines him stifling a yawn and drumming his fingers during the infamous showdown in Saipan when Mick McCarthy and Roy Keane bellowed at one another, hoping the pair would sort it out so he could catch a walk on the beach before sundown.

It is eminently possible Finnan was the only Irishman in the world without an opinion on what happened in Saipan. As a man nurtured in the ways of Anfield, he probably understood Keane's fury at the state of training "facilities". But equally, he could probably empathise with McCarthy's need to assert himself as the gaffer.

Privately, he probably thought it was all a lot of hot air that could have been easily sorted out with a wise compromise. In fact, he would have been the ideal broker, had anyone thought to ask him. But Finnan was there to play, and play he did.

We all, of course, delighted in his participation in that surreal classic Champions League final against Milan. Those of us who studied his features as he trotted off injured (replaced by Hamman) at half-time three goals down and looking set for outright humiliation noted he looked as even-tempered and businesslike as ever.

And after Liverpool won the penalty shootout, a smile of delight undeniably spread across his features. It was a rare sight, for it was never Finnan's practice to go in for shows of emotion. During league games or on those freezing, agonising European nights of international duty when Ireland needed (a) a 1-0 victory, (b) a 1-1 draw or (c) absolutely no more than a 0-1 defeat to keep hopes alive, Finnan played his part with the grim countenance of a mathematics wizard who knew that in life the numbers always beat you in the end. It was as though deep in his soul he understood there was something absurd about defending a set of goalposts for a living.

Of course, like many other elite football players, Finnan divided his sporting life by moonlighting as a real-estate mogul. Almost all of England's leading property magnates happen to be brilliant at football. It was reported recently that Finnan made a rare foray into the public realm in order to persuade a resident, a former university lecturer, not to object to his company's plans for a nearby extension. He came bearing alms in the form of a bottle of wine but when they could not strike an agreement, Finnan ruefully reported that the resident's apartment was a potential fire hazard in that it was absolutely jammed with books. He felt there were too many books in the cosy dwelling. And perhaps it was oblique concerns like these that blighted his enjoyment of defending the honour of the Kop or receiving the adulation at Lansdowne. Finnan was the kind of individual who could easily shadow a Jermain Defoe while ruminating on the problems of warehouses crammed with Stevie G biographies and hardback versions of Thackeray classics, books that might lie there for all eternity without being read.

Generally speaking, he is absolutely right. There are too many books in the world, whatever about in that particular gentleman's living quarters. Finnan may well quietly frown at the cavalier way his peers dash off life stories, adding to the vast wasteland of memoirs already in existence.

He will, however, always be too polite to berate them for it. I don't believe Finnan ever published a biography and it is extremely unlikely he ever will - though he does seem the sort who might, for his own amusement, keep a slyly entertaining diary chronicling the antics of his team-mates.

Much like Keyser Söze, we will probably never really know who Steve Finnan is until he has already gone. Now, he has half-left us, quietly and politely stepping down from the Republic of Ireland stage with the same detached decorum with which he graced it.

We hardly knew him but I am certain I miss him insofar as I remember him at all.