‘Finnegan didn’t want any fuss’
lad. So commendable. So much credit to them kids.
“The heart goes out to the kids and Anto’s wife, Alison, what they’ve faced over the last 11 years, tougher than people could imagine.
“But when you bumped into them, they would never bring you down.
“That’s telling you, ‘It’s not easy but we are coping and getting on’.
“You feel everything is okay, but you know it couldn’t be, thinking about it. That must be so tiring, and really impact the whole family circle.
“Conall is now a big lad, and he was at Anto’s side all the time. You could see how he embraced his role, how difficult it was for him in the early years.
“He’d be out pushing a wheelchair. He knew his responsibilities at a very early stage.
“He knew how to deal with people that wanted to speak to Anto, and knew what he wanted and didn’t. He became a man a bit quicker than most kids would.”
On the way to his final resting point last Wednesday, the funeral cortege stopped off at Casement Park, which now lies derelict, but was once the scene for some of Anto Finnegan’s greatest days.
He lifted the All-Ireland B title in 1999 at the Andersonstown Road venue.
“That was a massive moment and I always remember him saying that meant so much to him,” says McGreevy.
“I remember his speech that day, ‘This is only the start of big things for Antrim…
Toppled
The following year Antrim won their first Ulster Championship game for 18 years, when they toppled Down at Casement.
Finnegan was skipper again and McGreevy saved a penalty as thunder cracked across the city, lightning split the grey skies and hail battered down.
But Antrim fans couldn’t have cared less as the gods greeted a monumental day for GAA in the county. They had a team to be proud of.
Anthony Tohill’s fingertips denied Brian White’s saffrons a sensational Ulster semi-final win over then All-Ireland contenders and League champions, Derry.
They were beaten in the replay. “I bumped into a Derry AllIreland winner not so long ago and he said it’s amazing you still have this hard core of guys that sort of dine out on one Championship win,” smiles McGreevy. “He was joking.
“But he said, ‘We won an AllIreland and we wouldn’t have that sort of bond.’
“It is funny in a way. We won a game of football but it meant so much to so many people.
“That to us was like winning an All-Ireland. I’ll never know what that feels like, but if ever you could come close to that feeling of total elation winning a game of football, that was it.
“It was a success for us, with Anto leading things from there. He was ‘Mr Antrim,’ a great role model.”
McGreevy can picture Anto in the middle of a room underneath the Casement Park stands, “Eyeballing everybody. He had the full attention of the room.
“The passion, the determination, let’s get out and win at all costs.
Believe
“Sometimes you are playing under captains and they want you to believe what they are saying, but you can sort of tell that they don’t believe it either.
“You left a changing room under Anto and you never, ever doubted that you would win that match.
“He had this constant determination in him — ‘I am prepared to go out here and give everything I’ve got on this pitch for you guys. Are you
SEAN McGREEVY can recall hearing word that Anto Finnegan was sick.
It was back in 2012, and the former Antrim captain was in the early stages of Motor Neuron Disease.
McGreevy thought it was best just to go to the man himself and ask him outright.
When he heard what was happening, the ex-Saffrons goalie and Finnegan’s St Paul’s clubmate was lost for words.
He can still recall Finnegan’s response: “Yeah Sean, I’ve got Motor Neurones. It is what it is. I just have to get on with it and that’s it.”
McGreevy said: “I remember saying, ‘I don’t know what to say to you, I really don’t.
“‘I am lost for words. If there is anything I can do for you, don’t be afraid to lift the phone’.
“I had done a bit of research. What do you say in this conversation?
“It’s not like somebody prepared to do the same for me?’ “You felt like winners before you went out, and that’s tough playing with Antrim because they haven’t been successful over recent times, and every game was a challenge.”
Leaving Casement last Wednesday as part of the funeral procession, McGreevy was talking to Anto’s brother, Joe.
“I was saying, ‘As strange as this sounds, you could almost imagine Anto looking down now and saying, would youse all just catch yourselves on’.
“Literally saying, ‘Wise up, away and have a beer and just talk about me in the good times’.
“As much as he deserved every bit of that send off and more, that would have been the last thing Anto wanted.
Family
“There are people closer to Anto than me. His family obviously, who he’d be more open with.
“He didn’t want anybody concerned over him.
“People said to him about calling up to the house and he’d say,
‘No, no please don’t, if you’re not a regular at my house. I want normality’.
“He would have been concerned about the kids being young and seeing different faces at the door. He didn’t want a fuss.”
“The Anto you knew was the Anton everybody knew, and what you got all the time, whether it was on the pitch or off the pitch.
“Just a real one-off — desire to deliver, determination, honesty, passion and courage incomparable. You could not say a bad word about Anto Finnegan.
“He left a lot of people wondering how he done what he done.
“He sort of summed it up himself when he said about feeling trapped in his own body.
Lifting
“That is a very apt description of what it must have felt like.
“Lifting a pen, lifting a cup, he would have made the biggest effort to do it before asking for help.
“He was determined to try and do things for himself to the end. Just an incredible human being.
“It’s beyond words how determined he was to help other people, given his condition. It just takes a really special person to do that.”