If you are only going to get one shot at the big time, you may as well take it with both hands – and that is precisely what former West Ham goalkeeper Neil Finn did. His first-team career lasted one game, away at Manchester City on New Year’s Day 1996, but the story of how Finn came to be, at the time, the youngest player in Premier League history has ensured him pub quiz question immortality and a more enduring impact than many others who played more games.
‘Whenever the anniversary comes around and it’s mentioned, the amount of replies and responses that it gets is amazing,’ Finn, who turned 46 just after Christmas, told Blowing Bubbles. ‘There’s something about West Ham fans that they hang on to these things.’
Finn was a born and bred West Ham fan and season ticket holder who worked his way up the youth team ranks and had just gained a toe hold in the reserve squad when a suspension and injury crisis saw him thrust into the first team, alongside the likes of Julian Dicks, Marc Reiper and Ian Bishop, just three days after his 17th birthday.
‘All my family were West Ham fans, so as far as me getting into the club, it was pretty straight forward – there were no other teams in the frame,’ said Finn, born and raised in Rainham. ‘When I was about 14 I was playing for Barking Colts in a Cup final against Senrab, and Ronnie Boyce was there watching.
‘I don’t remember much about the game except that it was pouring with rain and we lost 6-0, but even though we got stuffed, I must have played OK because afterwards, Ronnie went and spoke to my parents, and just a few weeks later I was training with the West Ham schoolboys.’
For a keeper to stand out enough to be signed up after a 6-0 defeat speaks volumes about how well Finn must have played. Ironically, when he was at the club, the reserve team manager was Paul Hilton, who had an even more unlikely route to Upton Park, who joined after being part of the Bury side beaten 10-0 by West Ham in the League Cup in 1983.
Although Finn’s early 90s apprenticeship at the club involved many of the typical ground-floor roles from the time, such as sweeping up and cleaning boots, he also got a chance to rub shoulders with the first team heroes he had been watching a short time earlier as a fan.
‘Tony Cottee, Ludek Miklosko, Tim Breacker, Keith Rowland, they were the guys I used to watch, now I was mixing with them on a daily basis – it was amazing,’ he continued. ‘It was also a bit special for my dad too, because in the evening we used to train on the indoor pitch, and the parents could watch through the glass, and the likes of Billy Bonds, Jimmy Neighbour and Ronnie Boyce would join in in the five-a-side games. It was fantastic to be part of.’
Finn may have been a youngster, but he was soon welcomed as part of the goalkeepers’ union by the senior pros at the club. ‘On Tuesday and Thursday nights, Ludo, my hero, was doing the coaching for schoolboy goalies, and then you signed full time, you got to train with people like him and Les Sealey, who was the keeper coach. We had a great goalie group at the club at the time – there was also Ian Feuer, Stephen Bywater who was a year below me and was very highly rated, and Steve Mautone as well, it was an amazing group.’
But despite the strength in numbers, just six months after he had become a full-time member of staff at West Ham, squad thinness saw Finn thrust into the full glare of the first team floodlights in the most unexpected of circumstances.
‘I’d been in and around the reserves for a short time, sometimes on the bench, with just a few appearances, and just before Christmas, Ludo was sent off in a 3-0 defeat at Everton. Three days after that Ian, who had been on loan at Luton, joined them permanently, and that meant that they only fit available experienced keeper was Les, who’d been Ludo’s understudy for a long time, and in fact one of his handful of appearances was coming on as an outfield substitute at Arsenal.’
With numbers thin on the ground, the young Finn was added to the first-team squad for the trip to Manchester just three days after his 17th birthday purely for the experience of being around the seniors, and seeing how matchday operated. Or at least, that was the plan.
‘The club had told my parents I’d be travelling with the squad just for the experience, so I trained as normal in the build-up, then at the last minute Les pulled a calf muscle, so they had no alternative at short notice but to put me in the team,’ he said.
‘They told my parents about the change of plan, so they could make plans to get up there and watch the game, but the club didn’t tell me until I was at the hotel the night before. Some of the first team, who knew, said to me things like “are you looking forward to tomorrow,” and it was only later that I was actually told I was going to play. I was so stunned that I can’t actually remember what my reaction was.’
In days when the media spotlight was less intrusive than it is now, the startled youngster and indeed the fact that he was playing at all were kept hidden until as late as possible. ‘My parents were coming up to see the game, but that was all – Les and Ludo travelled up with the squad and looked after me very well, keeping me out of any limelight,’ he said. ‘In fact the club kept the whole thing away from the press as late as possible because they’d have made a big deal and put me under pressure.’
The young Finn could hardly have been in safer hands than those of Sealey and Miklosko. ‘Les took all of the nervousness away, even right from the start,’ he explained. ‘He liked to work one on one with Ludo, so if at the training ground Harry was looking for a couple of keepers to come over and join the first team for a workout, he would send us youngsters. He was an extremely tough coach but he was fair and you learned a hell of a lot from working with him. I knew my place with him but he would always have your back. We got on well, he was a lovely bloke.’
At just 17 years and three days, it was not just big boots that Finn was filling. ‘I think Harry tried to get an emergency loan in, but at that time of year it was hard to get hold of people, which is how I ended up playing,’ he said. ‘My training number was 45, the next available unallocated first team squad number was 31 so that’s what I was given. My name and number were put on the back by Ludo’s wife, and it was because it was so last minute that I ended up with a shirt that was way too big.’
The big game may have come days after both Christmas and Finn’s 17th birthday, but the demands of life as a footballer meant there was no thought of seasonal overindulgence. ‘Even though at our level we didn’t have games over the Christmas period, you’re still training and you still have to go in and do the other requirements of your job as an apprentice – in fact, we played up at City on January 1st, got back late, then I was back in the next day doing my regular apprentice jobs.’
Alas, anyone thinking that a moment in the big time and then back to sweeping up might be the start of a Cinderella story was in for a disappointment. At the top level, there is no room for sentiment. ‘As a player, you know if you’re good enough, and in that dressing room, I knew that I really shouldn’t be there, and that I was only there out of desperation and I was out of my depth,’ Finn said.
‘It’s very rare to see a keeper play that young, and for a good reason – I’d only been a full-time footballer for six months. Going out and warming up before the game, and seeing the size of Maine Road, was bizarre enough, but even more so when the game began – and as you can imagine, the City fans had a special chant for me that went on for what seemed like ages.’
The game itself ended in a 2-1 defeat, but anyone looking for probing insight into what happened is better advised to consult YouTube than West Ham’s debutant keeper. ‘I’d love to say I remember the game clearly but all I remember is I didn’t have a lot to do,’ he said. ‘I was expecting crosses under my cross bar and for their centre forward Niall Quinn, who was huge, to hammer me, but he didn’t.
‘He scored two, one a one-on-one, the other a deflection, and other than that I didn’t really have a lot to do, or see the ball too much. I made a few normal saves, my kicks were short, and Steve Lomas had a 30-yard screamer which was ruled out for offside, but that was about it. There’s a few photos of me shouting and pointing during the game, but to be honest, I’m not sure who at.’
Project Back to Reality began straight after the final whistle. ‘The first thing Harry Redknapp said to me afterwards was no press, which frankly suited me fine as I wouldn’t have known what to say, but when the others went into the players’ lounge, I had to wait outside with the kit man as I was too young,’ he said. ‘Having a chef who insisted on making me something to have on the coach back after the game was something I wasn’t used to either.’
Whilst Finn knew the harsh reality behind his first team chance – old fashioned desperation – the brief big crowd experience was to come in handy when later that season he played in the two-legged FA Youth Cup final against Liverpool, where the Irons lost 2-0 at home and 2-1 away, in front of more than 20,000 fans at Anfield. But back in the first team world, it soon became clear that Finn’s moment had passed.
‘I didn’t play because I was good enough, I played because they had no choice and I knew that from day one,’ he said. ‘After the game there was a lot of media interest and calls, which I wasn’t allowed to take, which was fine by me, and I then spent the next few seasons in the reserves, but I knew I wasn’t moving up. I wasn’t Premier League standard, I wasn’t the right size, and I couldn’t kick far enough – I could catch and save OK, but you had to have so much more than that, and I knew I didn’t.’
The end, when it came, was brutal. ‘When West Ham let me go, I thought some teams might come looking, and it certainly wasn’t for lack of trying – I contacted pretty much every local team, had a few trials, and played a few games but it just didn’t happen,’ Finn explained. ‘I trained at Barnet and sat on the bench all season without a contract or pay, just to see if something might happen, but it didn’t happen, and then the end came.
‘I had sorted out a contract with a National League club the season after being released, when I was about 20, I played four or five games for them and everything was set up for me to sign. Then on the day I was driving there when they rang to say their striker had broken his leg and they need to sign a replacement for him instead. That was it – I had to turn around and go home. I was very upset, and that’s how it ended.’
For a few years, at least. Then, Finn’s future father-in-law mentioned that he knew the manager of Romford FC, Finn went along, and spent the next decade playing for them – ‘purely because I loved playing so much’.
Not only did that give him an extra decade of playing, but it also got him a route into his current line of business, working for a stone and porcelain import company. ‘I absolutely loved my time at West Ham. There was a fantastic togetherness around the squad,’ he said. ‘My only regret is that the one game I got to play was away from home – it was such a rush, my head was spinning, but at least if it had been at Upton Park I would have been able to get a few more friends and family along to see it.’
He added: ‘I’m still a West Ham fan and sometimes I take clients there for European games, which is fun, and my son supports them too, so he goes along sometimes if he’s not playing on a Saturday. I’m still in touch with Frank Lampard, as we were apprentices together, and also some of the other youth team crowd on social media. In those days, Chadwell Heath was such a great place to be around. The coaches worked you very hard and had standards you had to live up to, so you learnt a hell of a lot from those guys.’
And it is at the training ground that Neil Finn, a hero, just for one day, has the last laugh on a couple of his more famous and successful former youth team colleagues. ‘Around the training ground indoor pitch, they have pictures of all the youth team lads who play a first team game, to inspire the next generation,’ he said. ‘When they started to do that, they were going to put Frank or Rio Ferdinand first, as they also made their debuts that same season, but my friend Danny Francis, who works at the club, pointed out that I played my one and only game on January 1st, a month before Frank and a few months before Rio, so I’m up first in the gallery, ahead of them.’
From 31, just once, to number 1, forever. Neil Finn’s is a special West Ham story.
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