Pete Finnerty: 'He’d always cross your mind'
Galway's Pete Finnerty pictured with his Hurling Hall of Fame award during the Gaelic Writers Association Awards, in association with the Clayton Hotels on Friday. Photo by Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile
By Cian O'Connell
Sport is about making memories. Medals can be collected along the way, but the friendships and matches linger in the mind.
Pete Finnerty was part of an iconic Galway half back line alongside Tony Keady and Gerry McInerney. Finnerty, Keady, and McInerney. The unit is still cherished in the west and respected everywhere else.
It's nearly a decade now since Keady passed away. Keady is never far from Finnerty's thoughts. "The kids were everything to him, and he was still as jovial and as good fun as ever," Finnerty says.
"Just whatever happened, his heart just give way and it's hard to believe it was the year Galway won the All-Ireland. There wouldn't be a day passed, definitely not two days when I don’t mention him somewhere.
"I think of him, it's just incredible, such a bond we had. He’d always cross your mind somewhere. The All-Stars the other week, I have five and (Joe) Canning has five. Keady won two and I remember him saying one time, ‘I deserved two for one year – I had a great league as well.’ That was him always."
Hurling has altered, but the relevance of a half back line is still critical. "We had the advantage of having played in so many big games together as well," Finnerty recalls.
"Don't fool ourselves for a second, if anything got past you had Sylvie (Linnane). In front of me was (Steve) Mahon, or (Michael) Coleman.
Pete Finnerty watching the 2024 All-Ireland SFC Semi-Final between Galway and Donegal at Croke Park. Photo by Ray McManus/Sportsfile
"Keady was asked once maybe by Brian Carthy about sweepers and he said, ‘You had Sylvie and (Ollie) Kilkenny in the corners, (Conor) Hayes at full-back, you had Finnerty and McInerney either side of me. Now, if you could put another one in there, Brian, you’d be doing well’. It was a different style of hurling."
The stories remain and will be passed to future generations. Under Micheál Donoghue's stewardship, Galway hurling stirred again in 2026, reaching the All-Ireland SFC Final.
Exciting new players emerged and flourished. "It’s youth, nothing else," Finnerty says.
"That's all we did, we put in youth. Mayo won an All-Ireland football by putting in youth. You look at when Pete Finnerty, Joe Cooney and Nicholas English and Pat Fox and the whole of us won our All-Stars.
"When did we win them? When we were 27, 28. The young lad doesn't have the baggage, he doesn't have the cruciate ligament that he's trying to mind, he's not coming back from a hamstring injury.
"He knows ‘I'm going to be here for another 10 years, hopefully all going well without an injury,’ so he throws caution to the wind - he just has a cut at it.
"We probably didn't have enough of a link between young and old. We had maybe Cathal Mannion and Daithí (Burke) and Pádraic Mannion, we needed one or two more to be able to give us a bit of stability."
The Gaelic Writers’ Association awards, sponsored by Clayton Hotels took place at the Clayton Hotel, Ballsbridge on Friday night. The GWA Awards recognise the extraordinary contribution of current players and managers, and Peter Finnerty was inducted into the 2026 GWA Hurling Hall of Fame.
Pete Finnerty was part of one of hurling's greatest half-back lines. Together with Tony Keady and Gerry McInerney, they helped to lay a platform for Galway's back-to-back All-Ireland titles in 1987 and 1988. He played in six All-Ireland finals for Galway between 1985 and 1993 and was a five-time All-Star.
