Liam Finn: We have plenty of reasons to make this a Grand Final to remember

Featherstone's Liam Finn won the Championship Player of the Year on Tuesday but has his sights firmly set on Halifax as Rovers bid to end an emotional season in style at Sunday's Grand Final.

I WORK for an electrican's firm based in Halifax so it's been an interesting week building up to the Grand Final.

One of their site managers is a big Halifax fan. He's come in and said health and safety laws don't apply to me.

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I'm allowed to go up ladders and do what I want, anything to help me fall off and get injured.

There has been a bit of banter flying around and Halifax is my hometown as well where I actually started my career; this would be a great Grand Final to win but a really bad one to lose.

We set ourselves goals at Featherstone back in November and one of them was to get to the final and then take the title. Now we're just 80 minutes from achieving that. There's a lot of reasons why we want to lift the trophy. Everyone knows we've dedicated this campaign to our team-mate Gareth Swift, who died in a car crash this year.

Losing Swifty was tragic and it proved a tough time but the club dealt with it well. The players definitely want to do it for him but we also lost Stu Dickens's mum before that which was another massive shock.

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We want to be successful for both of them and Stuey certainly deserves success given the service he's put in at Rovers.

He was on the bench when Fev last played the Grand Final in 1998, losing to Wakefield, and has played played about 350 games for the club now. It is a monumental effort. To put it in perspective, Brett Kimmorley's aged 33, has just played his 300th NRL game and is now retiring but Stuey's still only 30.

We've beaten Halifax three times this season and I'd imagine they'd take that as a positive by saying all the pressure is on us and none on them. I don't believe that though. They are a good team and it's 50/50; who turns up will win this one and we know they have quality.

As a half-back, I'll be up against Graham Holroyd. I know Ollie quite well. He's a good player who played for Siddal, the same amateur club as I did, although perhaps 10 years in front of me. In fact, it might be 15 years as he has been around a while!

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Ollie can control a game from start to finish and it's up to us to nullify that but Halifax have got other dangermen like Ben Black, Luke Branighan, Sean Penkywicz and – someone who made a big difference returning from injury last week – Bob Beswick.

Since leaving Dewsbury, it has been a really enjoyable first season for me at Featherstone, one which has gone better than expected.

Working with Daryl Powell and Ryan Sheridan has been like a breath fresh of air . It's good to get back to being coached and by people you respect who have done everything in the game. Anything you want to know they can tell you but they also want to know what your ideas are which is refreshing.

Winning the Championship Player of the Year on Tuesday night was nice, especially having won it the Champ 1 version with Dewsbury last season, but the best thing was it was voted for by opposition coaches so to have their respect is great.

However, the one we all want is this weekend. I've already booked the day off work on Monday and hopefully that will be to celebrate and not commiserate.

Interview by Dave Craven.

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