Five years has passed in the blink of an eye for Dale Finucane.
On Monday night Finucane will play his 100th NRL game when he takes to Pirtek Stadium to face the Eels.
The 24-year-old reaches the milestone in arguably the best form of his career.
Be at AAMI Park when we take on the Panthers, Saturday 4 June, 7:30pm.
Finucane has started every game in the No.13 for Craig Bellamy’s side in 2016 and has averaged 143 metres a game over the past month.
The stellar form is just reward for the boy from Bega, NSW who this week acknowledged the 100-game milestone.
“It feels awesome, it has come around very quickly,” Finucane said.
“It doesn’t feel that long ago since I played in my debut game but a few years has gone by since that occurred.
“Obviously it was a dream of mine that I wanted to play in the NRL but I would have never expected that I would’ve played 100 games.”
Since arriving in Melbourne on the eve of the 2015 season, Finucane’s toughness and team-first mentality has endeared him to the purple faithful.
While he has achieved his original goal of playing greater minutes in a starting role, there are plenty of development steps left to take for the emerging leader.
“I guess I’ve achieved that goal but obviously moving forward, it is to just play consistently for Melbourne Storm,” Finucane said.
“I think for myself and as a team we’ve tried to move away from structured football and tried to play more off the cuff and ad-lib football.
“Having our forwards playing the ball and tipping it on was one thing I wanted to work on and it has been a real team focus for us as well.”
Storm travel to Parramatta to take on the Eels this Monday night at 7pm.
