**How Finucane sparked form spike in the Tiger who trained on Christmas Day**
George Clarke from Fox Sports
August 17th, 2021 6:10 am
https://www.foxsports.com.au/nrl/nrl-premiership/teams/tigers/nrl-2021-wests-tigers-finals-run-stefano-utoikamanu-form-dale-finucane-nsw-blues/news-story/c10d42cd54ebc2015c4d1036e0372b59
The Wests Tigers may have missed out on Dale Finucane’s services earlier this year, but the influence of the Storm lock is still being felt among Michael Maguire’s squad.
None more so than for Stefano Utoikamanu, the Tigers prop who has taken it upon himself to lead the Tigers towards a late finals push.
Utoikamanu has been integral to that surge, leading their yardage in wins over the Cowboys and Dogs. But it is in part due to Finucane’s presence in the NSW Blues squad that the prop has gone from interchange option to first name on the teamlist.
“I probably started the year a bit slow,” says the 21-year-old, as he tends to his son, Samson, from the Tigers’ Queensland hotel.
“I got hungrier to be in the starting squad every week and I think going into that NSW camp (for Origin III) and being around those guys helped bring my confidence up a bit. “Being around players who are at the top of their game – that’s somewhere I want to be.
“That made me push myself and try be the best I could be for the Tigers.
“Everyone in that team is a leader, everybody talks in the meetings and prepares well.
“Dale Finucane, preparation wise, he’s so professional.
He was my roommate and he was down there stretching and doing all the extras after training and puts 100 per cent in.”
For Utoikamanu, who arrived from Parramatta during the off-season and cites Fuifui Moimoi as his inspiration, the work ethic has always been there.
So committed was the prop to make an impression on Maguire that he asked Tigers staff to turn the security alarm off at their training base so he could train on Christmas Day.
“I wanted to go train because I knew I was going to have a big one,” he says.
“I didn’t want to not train and then eat a load of junk. I really wanted to work hard and earn my spot in that team.”
Still outside of the eight, two consecutive wins have propelled the Tigers up the table and they can continue their pursuit of an unlikely finals finish with a win over a battered Cronulla on Saturday.
That’s followed by clashes with Penrith and Canterbury, and Utoikamanu says it’s in the Tigers’ hands to decide if they will play on into September.
“I definitely believe we can do it,” he adds.
“I think that if our whole team believes we can do it then we can put it into action.
“We’ve done it over these last two weeks to put in back to back wins.
“Over these next few weeks everybody has to focus on themselves individually and what they can do for the team to best prepare ourselves to win.
“That’s what we have done the last two weeks, but I think we can improve these next three weeks and I believe we’ve got what it takes to win.”
