By John Harrington

There’s a theory that corner-backs are born, not made, and there may be something to it.

After all, it’s not the most glamorous position on the pitch and demands a certain sort of mindset if you have any hope of thriving there.

You need to take a dark pleasure from preventing your opponent from hurling rather than be driven by a desire to play some pretty stuff yourself.

You must sacrifice yourself totally for the team. It doesn’t matter a damn if you don’t touch the ball as long as your opponent doesn’t either.

And if a wing-forward comes haring towards goal, your instinct better be to intercept him as quickly as you can even if that means leaving your direct opponent free for a potential pass.

A selfish corner-back who worries first and foremost about his own man not scoring is a weak link that will ensure the defensive chain eventually snaps.

Back in the day you could make it at the highest level as a corner-back if you were just a destroyer, but no longer.

Now you have to be one of the most well-rounded players on the pitch. Someone who is as comfortable hurling his man from the front as he is shadowing, harrying, and hassling him from behind.

The ideal prototype? Step forward Limerick corner-back, Sean Finn. An All-Star for the last three years running, there is none better in the game right now.

Such is the enthusiasm he shows on the pitch for making a corner-forward’s afternoon little short of a living hell, you won’t be surprised to here he really enjoys playing a position that wouldn’t be most hurler’s cup of tea.

“Yeah I do enjoy it,” says Finn. “I’m playing there a long time now albeit I’m only 25. I got to learn a lot over the past couple of year and how to mark different players, whether they’re taller, smaller, faster, slower so I’ve learned a lot.

“But yeah, I don’t know could I see myself playing out the field anymore. I’m built for the corner and that’s it, I think. It’s my place and hopefully I’ll be there for another while.”

Finn is ‘built for the corner’ in more ways than one because he benefits from nature as well as nurture.

His father Brian was also a fine corner-back for Limerick in the 1980s and 1990s, and played the game with the same sort of grit and determination his son now does.

Has Finn Senior been a big influence on Finn Junior?

“He would have growing up, for sure,” says Finn. “As a young lad, when you’re 15/16/17, there’s times when you mightn’t want to go training and stuff but he was great to pack a bag and pull me into the car and drive me to training so he’s been certainly an influence and even nuggets of information or words of encouragement going into big games from your father is a nice touch but he would be over the last couple of years a significant figure, someone you would have looked up to over the last couple of years.”

Physically, Finn is everything you would want in a corner-back. He’s powerfully built, exceptionally fast, and has an immaculate first touch.

Just as importantly, he’s also mentally very durable.

In the modern game where wing-backs like to raid into the opposition half of the field, the corner-back is often left very exposed behind them.

And no matter how good you are, if there’s 40 yards of grass in front of you and the opposition turn over the ball and immediately send the right delivery into a corner-forward’s hand, there’s very little you can do as a defender.

Limiting a top corner-forward to two or three points is a good day’s work for a corner-back in the modern game, and if you ship a score you have to mentally tough enough not to let it play on your mind and just stick to your job.

“Yeah, it’s a really good point,” says Finn. “It’s definitely something that I’ve learned over the last couple of years. Top class forwards you’re marking every weekend, they’re not there for no reason, they’re good players so there’s going to be times when they’re going to get the ball in the corner and they’re going to put it over the bar.

“It’s important to not let that get to you and it’s something that we’d often chat about. There’s going to be times where you’re going to have to let a player get a score rather than committing too much and conceding a goal over it.

“So, yeah, it’s probably the way the game has changed really and it’s definitely something that I’ve learned over the last couple of years where even if a player does get two or three points and if you were on 15 possessions you’ve had a really good game even though he’s scored three points.

“Yeah, it’s something I’ve learned from. There’s times when I’d be happy to let a player pop it over the bar and be that bit conservative.”

Corner-backs need to have bullet-proof confidence. If you worry too much about what the corner-forward you’re marking is capable of rather than focusing on just attacking the ball yourself, then you’re already in trouble.

What makes Finn such a formidable defender is that he always backs himself to hurl from the front and play his own game, and doesn’t expend too much mental energy on studying or stressing about his opponent on any given day.

“I wouldn’t, no, I wouldn’t myself,” he says. “Of course other players would look at players they’re marking but I have a fair idea over the past couple of years of what a player’s like, what their main side is from shooting, but I have my own way of playing too.

“If I play the way I like to play, I'd have good faith and good trust in my ability as a corner-back that I’d be able to handle whatever comes into the corner.

“It’s just being able to adapt and not being pigeonholed to a certain player, being able to adapt to a taller player who prefers to take you on or a smaller player who’ll shoot from outside you.

“I’ve learned to adapt over the last couple of years, I’ve learned a lot over the last couple of years and yeah, I wouldn’t focus solely really on any other players, just myself.”

Safe to say, it’s an approach that’s working well so far for the Bruff man.