Premiership-winning coach Craig Bellamy has seen plenty of great players come through the doors at Melbourne Storm during his long career, but few have left as big an impression as True Blue Dale Finucane.
Finucane celebrates his 250th NRL match playing for Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks in Round Two against his former club Canterbury-Bankstown. He celebrated the milestones for his 100th, 150th and 200th games with Storm.
“The thing for me in always admiring him as a player was he was just so consistent – you knew he would give his absolute best every single game; he was so reliable,” Bellamy told nswrl.com.au.
“And then coaching him I found out why. I’ve never seen a player prepare for a game as good as Dale Finucane … that for me is the key to him getting to 250 games and hopefully quite a few more.
“I mean Cooper (Cronk) was great too, but Dale’s preparation was top-shelf. He was just relentless with it and a lot of our young blokes learnt a lot off him.
“Dale was always the first bloke in and the last to leave. He knew what worked for him and what he had to do with his body to get the best out of it every weekend.
“He’s also the nicest bloke in the world.”
But an example of his preparedness was the weekly schedule he would give his wife, Maddie.
“It was a timetable of when he could look after the kids and when he couldn’t,” Bellamy said.
“In it there would be his training times and all the stuff outside of that he had to do to keep his body as healthy as he could. So that’s how organised he was.”
Finucane made his NRL debut in 2012 with the Bulldogs, then enjoyed seven seasons with Storm (2015-2021) before moving to the Sharks in 2022.
He made his NSW Origin debut while at the Storm, playing five games from 2019-2021.
Bellamy, a former Blues coach (2008-2010), said there was great excitement when Finucane was picked for the 2019 Origin series, which NSW claimed 2-1.
“We were really proud of him,” he said.
“Everyone knew he really deserved it. And you like to see guys who deserve it get the rep jumpers.
“On the field he’d never let anyone down through a lack of effort. And I don’t know how many players could say that through their whole careers.”
And then there's his guitar playing and musical skills.
"He's got such a good voice in him. At most of our Storm functions we usually opened with 20 minutes of Dale singing ... magic," Bellamy said.
