Finlay Bealham’s sole ambition in life, for almost as long as he can remember, was to be a professional rugby player.
In part, he admits candidly, it was because he reckons he wasn’t much good at anything else. He always had a work ethic, just not for anything else.
So, while he liked his schoolmates, he didn’t particularly like school. He preferred being dropped off at the gym by his dad before school.
“I wanted it so bad. I would do extras after school as well that I knew the others weren’t doing. I wasn’t the most talented, but I suppose I wanted it the most, and that work ethic and being able to take advice has gone a long way. I feel like I can really respond to that through the experiences I’ve had.”
His performances at St Edmund’s College in his home city of Canberra earned him regional recognition and a couple of internationals for the Australian Schools against their Tongan and New Zealand counterparts in 2009.
But at the Brumbies academy they told him he was “too small to play prop”. The verdict might have shattered the dreams of most 18-year-olds. But his reaction tells us much about Bealham, and what has partly stoked his fires ever since.
“I just said: ‘F*** this. I’ll get back in the gym so’. I was only 18 and it’s changed a lot since then. You can be whatever size and they’ll work with you. You can always get bigger man,” he says, laughing.
“I didn’t accept that answer and I wasn’t going to allow that to be a reason why I couldn’t achieve my dreams. Fortunately, I had a really strong family who really believed in me and my goals.”
He and his father, Roy, resolved that he try his luck in Ireland, given his maternal grandmother Sarah, or ‘Sadie’, hailed from Enniskillen. They even put together a video highlights reel of Bealham and sent it to Allen Clarke, then the IRFU’s high performance manager, and Mike Ruddock, then the Irish Under-20 coach.
He was given a trial at the end of 2010, although his first game for Ulster ‘A’ against Leinster ‘A’ was cancelled due to the ‘Big Freeze’. Belfast Harlequins found him accommodation and blooded him in their seconds’ XV.
“They looked after me as if I was one of their own,” he says.
He played a couple of games for the Irish Under-20s in the 2011 Six Nations and World Championships in Italy, along with Tadgh Furlong, Iain Henderson, Jordi Murphy and current Connacht team-mate Tiernan O’Halloran among others.
But prior to the World Cup, Gary Longwell, then head of the Ulster academy, came up to Bealham, shook his hand, thanked him and wished him well. More rejection.
“Damn, that’s me dusted,” Bealham recalls. But at the Under-20 World Cup, Clarke told him that Nigel Carolan wanted him at the Connacht academy.
“I was potentially going back to Australia and packing in the rugby. After the World Cup I had a few days in Enniskillen and I was missing home. I’d moved across the world, had settled into life in Belfast, and was then going to move to the other side of the country and go through that same experience; meeting new people, new surroundings.
“But, as a kid, I always wanted to be a professional rugby [player], so I took the punt and went down to Galway. Nigel picked me up, brought me to my accommodation and I was training with the seniors next day – John Muldoon, Johnny O’Connor, Gavin Duffy, Michael Swift and all those legends.
“When I first came to Connacht I just felt like ‘this is home’: the culture, the people, the city. The people were unbelievable, and I suppose I’ve never turned back.”
He roomed with Kieran Marmion and others in Renmore. After promotion to the full academy for another two years, and six appearances off the bench, his signed his first senior contract. Now here he is, in his 12th season with Connacht, for whom he’s played 185 times, and 30 caps for Ireland.
Quite where the inner determination comes from, he’s not entirely sure. There wasn’t much rugby in the family, although his grandmother’s brother, Gordon Ferris, was both supportive and inspirational. Ferris was both the Irish and British heavyweight boxing champion in the early 80s and now runs a pub in England.
“He had an aura about him around the family.”
Bealham’s younger brother, Sean, is a police officer in Melbourne and his younger sister Skye works in Brisbane.
“I’m the oldest, if not necessarily the wisest,” he admits.
His dad was a computer programmer in Canberra, and his mum Andrea worked as a Hansard editor for the government. As well as playing rugby and some cricket in the summer, wrestling was a favourite past-time, often in the pool.
“Me and my brother would do ‘double chokeslams’ on our sister. We had a really good, active childhood. I probably wound my parents up no end but it was good craic.”
He began playing rugby union at 11 with St Edmonds on Saturdays and rugby league with the Queanbeyan Blues – to improve his tackling – on Sundays, before focusing solely on Union from the age of 16. He was a front-row prop in both codes.
After school, he prioritised playing first and second with the Tuggeranong Vikings rather than the Australian Under-20s “just to scrummage against grown men. It was a bit of a trial by fire, but I really enjoyed my time at Vikings”.
Beginning a new life in Ireland, and initially Ulster, was made easier by regular family holidays to Enniskillen. He even lived and went to school in Enniskillen “for a wee while” when he was about seven.
Bealham’s story puts into perspective that emotional meeting with his parents at Twickenham after he had scored Ireland’s fourth try in their 32-15 win in last year’s Six Nations, given it was their first meeting in 2½ years due to the pandemic.
Still, he came into this year’s Six Nations having started just four of his 27 Tests. But when Tadhg Furlong was ruled out of the opening rounds, Bealham made light of the Lion’s absence with big performances against Wales and France.
Although a knee injury in Rome cut short Bealham’s tournament, the positives far outweighed the negative. He made the Team of the Championship and was at the Grand Slam coronation in the Aviva.
“I was blessed to be a part of that team. It’s a memory that will live with me until the day I die.”
He’s also made it back for Connacht’s crunch home game against Cardiff tonight. And he loves it when the Sportsground is crammed.
“We don’t have a big 60,000-seat stadium but the crowd we get, it makes it feel like that. Whether it’s rain, hail, sunshine – usually the four seasons in the one game – they’re always cheering you on. Regardless of a win or a loss, they’re always there to pat your back. They really appreciate the work that we put in, and it’s mutual. We have the best fans in the world.”
Funnily enough, he’s the longest-serving of the Aussie clan now in Connacht, what with John Porch, Mack Hansen and Andy Friend. Back when Friend was head coach of the Brumbies, he presented players with end-of-year awards at St Edmund’s, one of them being Bealham, a photo he sent on to his Connacht coach many years later.
[ Mack Hansen still going with the flow of his whirlwind Ireland careerOpens in new window ]
Over time, you’d hardly recognise Bealham in some photos. His hairstyle gone from quasi-afro, to short cropped with a ponytail, to his more recent Viking incarnation for match days.
“I’m a big fan of the TV show Vikings and they all braid their hair and go into battle, and I suppose it’s my take on that. I’m a big fan of the show. It’s a bit of craic and I like what it represents. I get the hair done close to a game, close to when I’m ready to go into battle so to speak. It’s a bit out there but be yourself man.”
In Galway and Connacht, he’s long since learned to be just that.
“I don’t feel like it’s my 12th season at all,” he says. He enjoys coming in to work now more than ever and believes, at 31, that his best years are still ahead of him.
He met Sarah, a pharmacist and a Galway girl, in early 2016, and they married last year.
“She’s very supportive and she gets it. She just lets me play my rugby. I’ve always had a supportive network, and none more so than my lovely wife.”
They live in Salthill, which is convenient for taking their 70kg French mastiff, Bane, for walks.
“He loves getting in the water and making a fool of himself. He’s a horse, but genuinely such a placid, laid-back good dog. No bad in him whatsoever.”
When all the rugby is done he’ll stay in Galway with Sarah and Bane. He’s long since become a man of Connacht.
“It’s home now. I’ll be here forever.”
