By Paul Fitzpatrick
Paul Brady and Michael Finnegan will take to the court for this Saturday’s All-Ireland 40x20 SD final chasing a record – and also putting right one they feel got away last year.
Saturday’s decider against Dublin’s Carl Browne and Eoin Kennedy will be the Cavan men’s 16th Senior Doubles final, a run stretching back to 2000, and a win would break the record of 10 titles which they share with Meath’s Tom Sheridan.
The Royal veteran picked up medal number 10 in last year’s final when Brady was forced to retire with the match poised at a game apiece. While that played on his mind for a while, Finnegan has now put it behind him, he says.
“It did but at the same time, while we lost the title, we never looked at it as if we were beaten. We forfeited the game because Paul got injured. Going into this final, it is in our heads that we weren’t beaten last year and we haven’t been beaten in a long time,” the Kingscourt man told GAAHandball.ie.
“That gives us confidence, the fact that if Paul was 100pc we feel we definitely would’ve won last year. We have a tough game in the final but we’ll be giving it everything again.”
Brady was on international duty last weekend, picking up another success in Salt Lake City, and the training will be tapered down on his return.
“We’ve just been doing our own thing. Paul was obviously away playing in America last weekend so it will be a matter of getting a game in to get him used to the Irish ball again,” said Finnegan.
“We won’t travel to Kilkenny this week, we’ll probably just play ourselves and then try to stay fresh. In other years we have travelled for training games and they haven’t done us much good sometimes so you can be better off just getting a good game in yourself.”
The Dublin pair are the reigning 60x30 champions and will be expected to pose a serious test. Lest anyone forget, Kennedy (along with another Meathman turned Dubliner, Egin Jensen) beat the Cavanmen in an All-Ireland SD final before, 10 years ago in Finnegan and Brady’s home court.
Both pairs toiled a little last time out, with Dublin going to three against Mayo’s Vinny Moran and Joe McCann and Cavan beating Kerry in a pair of 21-16 games.
“What are we expecting? A good tight game – any time you play Eoin Kennedy it’s always very tough, he is very hard beaten. ‘Boo’ is on the right with him and he’ll miss very little.
“They’re a good doubles team, they won the big alley last year so they know how to win together and they played well together and we will definitely need to be at our best.
“We didn’t play as well as we could have in the semi-final but in other years we have played well in semi-finals and not in finals, and vice versa – sometimes we were poor in semi-finals and flying in the final.
“The performance wasn’t great but in saying that, you couldn’t take away from Dominick Lynch and Jack O’Shea, they played very well and we only played as well as we were let really.
“But the main thing was that we won, we weren’t looking any further than that and we achieved that. The final is a whole new ball game.
“As I said, it’s a matter of Paul getting back on the court over here after playing with a different ball at the weekend. We’ve been playing together for nearly 20 years now and there’s no point in going to get training games for the sake of it, we know each other’s games well and we just need to get into the court ourselves and staying sharp.”
Saturday 23rd April - All Ireland Doubles Finals, in O’Loughlin’s, Kilkenny
- 4.00pm Minor Final: Tyrone (Sean Kerr/Turlough Clarke) v Cork (Tadgh O’ Neill/David Walsh)
- 5.00pm Senior Final: Cavan (Paul Brady/Michael Finnegan) v Dublin (Eoin Kennedy/Carl Browne)
