A fearless newspaperman who was once banned from The Showgrounds

SEAMUS Finn was the country’s youngest newspaper editor when he was appointed by Charles Townsend to replace Tom Palmer in The Sligo Champion hot seat in 1972.

He was to become the longest serving editor by the time he retired in 2009. Those cold statistics, impressive as they are, don’t tell the full story, however. In mourning his passing, I feel compelled, having worked alongside him for most of his tenure in the editor’s chair and to have eventually succeeded him, to fill in some of the blanks.

His legendary status, not to mention his hallmark characteristics as a fearless newspaperman, probably began to take shape around 1969 when, as a hard-hitting, no punches-pulled sports reporter, he had the dubious honour of being the first – and as far as I’m aware still the only – journalist to be banned by Sligo Rovers from reporting matches at the Showgrounds. The committee took umbrage at his biting criticism of the team, which culminated in a derisory front page cartoon after the fulltime professional team had been unceremoniously dumped out of the FAI Cup by lowly non-leaguers Longford Town.

In typical Finner fashion, he didn’t take the dismissal lying down. The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) got involved and instructed its members nationwide not to write or broadcast a single line about Sligo Rovers, effectively bringing about a complete blackout on media coverage of the club’s affairs.

Faced with a very tangible example of the power of the Press, the club soon relented and Seamus and his colleagues returned to their damp, draught-ridden cubby-hole on the Showgrounds sideline, from where he continued to write exquisite, incisive and entertaining match reports. Indeed, the perfect prose often proved much more pleasing than the matches.