Everyone at Hull FC is deeply saddened to learn of the passing of former scrum half Tommy Finn.
At the age of 87, Tommy sadly passed away on Thursday evening.
Club Historian Bill Dalton has written a tribute to Tommy, one of the greatest halfbacks to represent the club.
Tommy, a St Helens lad, had represented Lancashire Schoolboys before signing for Saints in 1951.
He made his debut on Christmas Day in 1951 at scrum-half against Leigh, the first of eight appearances that season.
Unfortunately, they were the only times that Tommy played in the first team at Knowsley Road and Hull secured his signature from St Helens in December 1954.
His first appearance for the Airlie Birds was on 4th December 1954 – a 5-3 victory at Dewsbury. He went on to play in 22 of the remaining 23 matches in that first season, a foretaste of the remainder of his career at Hull, for whom he amassed a total of 375 appearances. From 1955-56 to 1963-64, he never played less than 31 matches in a season, and in four of them played over 40.
Playing behind the famous Hull pack of forwards, Tommy proved a prolific try scorer and his persistent support play enabled him to touch down for Hull on some 132 occasions, placing him 10th in Hull’s all-time try scoring list.
Indeed, he is Hull’s highest-scoring half-back of all time – given that Alf Francis and Richard Horne regularly played and scored in other positions.
His tally of tries included no less than seven hat-tricks. In conjunction with Johnny Whiteley, they were masters of the old scrum-base craft of the old days.
He was a member of the Yorkshire Cup Final teams which drew in 1955, but were unsuccessful in the replay, and also the 1959 team.
Tom was the scrum-half in all three of Hull’s Championship Final teams in 1956, 1957 and 1958, and he scored in each of the two victories in ’56 and ’58.
Indeed, of Hull’s total of 134 matches during those seasons, Tom played in 123 of them.
Tommy was also scrum-half against Wigan on the occasion of Hull’s debut at Wembley in the 1959 Challenge Cup Final.
Although the Hull team went down to a very good Wigan performance, Tommy gained lasting recognition for the try he scored as it was shown in the end credits of BBC’s ‘Grandstand’ Programme on Saturday afternoons for many years afterward.
The emergence of Chris Davidson and Kenny Foulkes during 1964 helped Tommy to finally hang up his boots in February 1965, just a week after Johnny Whiteley had also called time on his career.
Our thoughts are with Tommy’s family and friends at this extremely sad time.
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