THERE IS A small consolation in the devastation caused when somebody dies, especially unexpectedly.
It may be a modern phenomenon, accelerated by social media, but a cast iron legend dying now produces a supernova of memories, stories and anecdotes that fleshes out the personality of those lost.
In the case of Teddy McCarthy, he was such a star that one sport could never contain him. His passing just shy of 58 causes huge hurt in Cork and beyond.
The only man to ever complete a personal football and hurling double in 1990, that very feat later produced one of the great bar-room stories.
The former Clare hurling captain Anthony Daly said once on an Irish Examiner podcast that he was in a bar in Blackpool one evening and there was a terrible fuss being made about him by the locals. That was until an elder statesman of the drinking shop interrupted proceedings to enquire, ‘And how many All-Irelands did ye win?’
To which Daly replied, ‘Two’, teeing up the brutal response, comic timing ladelled on with a sip of a pint before he said back, ‘We’d a fella did that in a fortnight.’
It’s hard to figure out if it’s the bare statistics of a life playing football and hurling, or the granular detail that impresses most about the son of Glanmire football and Sarsfields hurling.
Teddy McCarthy in action against Bill Hennessy. INPHO
INPHO
The medal count stands at a pair of All-Ireland medals in each code. Six Munster football titles in the most golden age of Cork football and three in hurling. A National League hurling title. A football All-Star and Texaco Footballer of the Year in 1989.
However, the sheer schedule of someone pursuing glory on both fronts was gruelling from the outset.
In 1986, he turned 21 in July. In a barely conceivable act nowadays, he spent 31 August playing a trial game for Ireland in a Compromise Rules game in Croke Park.
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The following week, he was named to make his debut for Cork hurlers. Not in a meaningless challenge or pre-season warm-up, but against Galway, in Croke Park, for the All-Ireland final. More on that in a minute.
Seven days on, he won his third All-Ireland U21 football medal, starting for Cork.
The following year, he might have been hoping for a little reprieve. He was out of the U21 grade and as such, had four less teams to play for.
But he was appointed captain of the Glanmire footballers, and then there was a rash of draws in both codes.
That summer he played the following:
June 14 – Munster hurling semi-final V Limerick.
June 28 – Munster hurling semi-final replay.
July 12 – Munster hurling final V Tipperary.
July 19 – Munster hurling final replay.
July 26 – Munster football final V Kerry.
August 2 – Munster football final replay.
When he was just 17, he had nine different teams to play for. In one fortnight in August 1982 he played six championship games in 12 days. His mother Mary’s hands were red raw from scrubbing grass stains out of his shorts.
Back to that 1986 hurling final. McCarthy’s abilities were long signposted from his illustrious career at U21 level, but the senior hurlers found themselves at the back of a long queue waiting on his services.
The former Cork manager John Meyler was on the panel in 1986 and was experiencing a mild frustration at not getting many minutes, not getting on at all in the semi-final win over Antrim.
He had been hopeful for the final. Cruelly, John Hodgins and Dermot McCurtain had torn their cruciates. Teddy was appearing around the scene, but – again a measure of how he did his own thing – had gone off for a fortnight in The Canary Islands for a holiday and missed the Antrim game.
On the train on the way back from the semi-final, Meyler was sharing a train carriage with the manager Johnny Clifford, Dr Con Murphy and Jimmy Barry-Murphy. Johnny asked if Meyler might excuse them so they could have a chat.
‘I moved over away from them,’ Meyler recalled in ‘Meyler: A Family Memoir.’
‘But I was half-listening in to what they were saying and it turned out they were picking the team for the All-Ireland.
‘It came to a debate over the half-forward line and I was edging over, trying to hear. Teddy was mentioned. It was gas. He was sunning himself abroad on holidays while the rest of us were heading back to Cork. Teddy came back refreshed, started and made his championship debut, and Cork won the All-Ireland.’
When he came back from his holidays on Saturday, 28 August, there was a letter at home inviting him to a trial for the Compromise Rules team. Later that evening he ambled down to the Glanmire football pitch where they were playing Mayfield with nothing but pride at stake. He brought his boots.
A serious row got up among the selectors, one of whom, Timmy Walsh, had an inkling he would be used in the All-Ireland final. He played anyway.
Referee Ned Porter asked the selectors to take him off. Soon after he was heading down the wing and sensed two players closing in to make him the meat in a sandwich. He swung his elbow back to catch one on the chin. All hell broke out and Walsh grabbed him and marched him into his car as the match was abandoned.
A few things happened around that time to make Cork a football force. Undoubtedly, the arrival of Larry Tompkins to Castlehavan and his twice-daily training regime was a pointer to how the culture would change, but also Billy Morgan found in McCarthy someone who would truly mirror his disgust for their relationship as compliant losers to Kerry.
In 1984, he was brought along to the Munster football final as a 19-year-old to sample the day as a non-playing panel member. Before heading in the gates, the players mingled.
‘Our lads, the older players, looked at them in awe. It was all, “Howya Jacko, how’s it going, Páidí, good man, Bomber,” he recalled in his autobiography, ‘Teddy Boy.’
‘All that sort of shite. Looking up to them. Beaten before the bloody gate had even opened.’
McCarthy taking the fight to Bomber Liston. Billy Stickland / INPHO
Billy Stickland / INPHO / INPHO
That incident stuck with him every single time he met Kerry thereon.
For McCarthy to do what he did, suggests that he pushed club commitments down the foodchain, similar to Páidí Ó Sé. Not so.
In the middle of November, 1992, he was due to meet up with the footballers at Jury’s at noon. Glanmire had a game at 11am. Only 14 turned up and as he sat watching the action, he felt somebody would drag themselves out of bed to have the regulation 15 on for the start of the second half.
Nobody did. He dashed up home and grabbed his club kit bag, along with his Cork one. He played the second half.
Afterwards, he rang the hotel to explain to the selectors what happened. They took a dim view of it.
In the dressing room, they delivered the news he was dropped. He instantly togged back into his civvies and was heading for the door when he got a tap on the shoulder from Billy Morgan, asking where he was going.
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‘Fuck you and fuck Cork,’ was his reply.
‘My club comes first, same as Nemo is for you.’
He pushed Morgan in the chest to emphasise the point. Morgan slipped on the tiles and Teddy walked on.
The following week, he played for the county hurlers. Phone calls were made. He was holding out for an apology. He and Morgan met and had it out. A Mexican standoff would emerge and he went back to football.
McCarthy becomes the third player from the 1990 Cork side to pass away after Mick McCarthy in 1998, and John Kerins in 2001.
His own early life was forged in hardship. He lost his father, Denis, when he was just four. With eight children, times were tough and tight. Ireland was also a different place and neighbours and friends looked out for each other. His first pair of Gola football boots were gifted to him by a neighbour.
His signature skill was his fetch. His athletic ability for the time was awesome, even in an era of elegant midfielders. Numerous pictures capture the moment of him in full flight.
It’s how he will live on in the memory. Teddy Boy.
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Cork's Teddy McCarthy was such a star that one sport could never contain him
THERE IS A small consolation in the devastation caused when somebody dies, especially unexpectedly.
It may be a modern phenomenon, accelerated by social media, but a cast iron legend dying now produces a supernova of memories, stories and anecdotes that fleshes out the personality of those lost.
In the case of Teddy McCarthy, he was such a star that one sport could never contain him. His passing just shy of 58 causes huge hurt in Cork and beyond.
The only man to ever complete a personal football and hurling double in 1990, that very feat later produced one of the great bar-room stories.
The former Clare hurling captain Anthony Daly said once on an Irish Examiner podcast that he was in a bar in Blackpool one evening and there was a terrible fuss being made about him by the locals. That was until an elder statesman of the drinking shop interrupted proceedings to enquire, ‘And how many All-Irelands did ye win?’
To which Daly replied, ‘Two’, teeing up the brutal response, comic timing ladelled on with a sip of a pint before he said back, ‘We’d a fella did that in a fortnight.’
It’s hard to figure out if it’s the bare statistics of a life playing football and hurling, or the granular detail that impresses most about the son of Glanmire football and Sarsfields hurling.
The medal count stands at a pair of All-Ireland medals in each code. Six Munster football titles in the most golden age of Cork football and three in hurling. A National League hurling title. A football All-Star and Texaco Footballer of the Year in 1989.
However, the sheer schedule of someone pursuing glory on both fronts was gruelling from the outset.
In 1986, he turned 21 in July. In a barely conceivable act nowadays, he spent 31 August playing a trial game for Ireland in a Compromise Rules game in Croke Park.
The following week, he was named to make his debut for Cork hurlers. Not in a meaningless challenge or pre-season warm-up, but against Galway, in Croke Park, for the All-Ireland final. More on that in a minute.
Seven days on, he won his third All-Ireland U21 football medal, starting for Cork.
The following year, he might have been hoping for a little reprieve. He was out of the U21 grade and as such, had four less teams to play for.
But he was appointed captain of the Glanmire footballers, and then there was a rash of draws in both codes.
When he was just 17, he had nine different teams to play for. In one fortnight in August 1982 he played six championship games in 12 days. His mother Mary’s hands were red raw from scrubbing grass stains out of his shorts.
Back to that 1986 hurling final. McCarthy’s abilities were long signposted from his illustrious career at U21 level, but the senior hurlers found themselves at the back of a long queue waiting on his services.
The former Cork manager John Meyler was on the panel in 1986 and was experiencing a mild frustration at not getting many minutes, not getting on at all in the semi-final win over Antrim.
He had been hopeful for the final. Cruelly, John Hodgins and Dermot McCurtain had torn their cruciates. Teddy was appearing around the scene, but – again a measure of how he did his own thing – had gone off for a fortnight in The Canary Islands for a holiday and missed the Antrim game.
On the train on the way back from the semi-final, Meyler was sharing a train carriage with the manager Johnny Clifford, Dr Con Murphy and Jimmy Barry-Murphy. Johnny asked if Meyler might excuse them so they could have a chat.
‘I moved over away from them,’ Meyler recalled in ‘Meyler: A Family Memoir.’
‘But I was half-listening in to what they were saying and it turned out they were picking the team for the All-Ireland.
‘It came to a debate over the half-forward line and I was edging over, trying to hear. Teddy was mentioned. It was gas. He was sunning himself abroad on holidays while the rest of us were heading back to Cork. Teddy came back refreshed, started and made his championship debut, and Cork won the All-Ireland.’
When he came back from his holidays on Saturday, 28 August, there was a letter at home inviting him to a trial for the Compromise Rules team. Later that evening he ambled down to the Glanmire football pitch where they were playing Mayfield with nothing but pride at stake. He brought his boots.
A serious row got up among the selectors, one of whom, Timmy Walsh, had an inkling he would be used in the All-Ireland final. He played anyway.
Referee Ned Porter asked the selectors to take him off. Soon after he was heading down the wing and sensed two players closing in to make him the meat in a sandwich. He swung his elbow back to catch one on the chin. All hell broke out and Walsh grabbed him and marched him into his car as the match was abandoned.
A few things happened around that time to make Cork a football force. Undoubtedly, the arrival of Larry Tompkins to Castlehavan and his twice-daily training regime was a pointer to how the culture would change, but also Billy Morgan found in McCarthy someone who would truly mirror his disgust for their relationship as compliant losers to Kerry.
In 1984, he was brought along to the Munster football final as a 19-year-old to sample the day as a non-playing panel member. Before heading in the gates, the players mingled.
‘Our lads, the older players, looked at them in awe. It was all, “Howya Jacko, how’s it going, Páidí, good man, Bomber,” he recalled in his autobiography, ‘Teddy Boy.’
‘All that sort of shite. Looking up to them. Beaten before the bloody gate had even opened.’
That incident stuck with him every single time he met Kerry thereon.
For McCarthy to do what he did, suggests that he pushed club commitments down the foodchain, similar to Páidí Ó Sé. Not so.
In the middle of November, 1992, he was due to meet up with the footballers at Jury’s at noon. Glanmire had a game at 11am. Only 14 turned up and as he sat watching the action, he felt somebody would drag themselves out of bed to have the regulation 15 on for the start of the second half.
Nobody did. He dashed up home and grabbed his club kit bag, along with his Cork one. He played the second half.
Afterwards, he rang the hotel to explain to the selectors what happened. They took a dim view of it.
In the dressing room, they delivered the news he was dropped. He instantly togged back into his civvies and was heading for the door when he got a tap on the shoulder from Billy Morgan, asking where he was going.
‘Fuck you and fuck Cork,’ was his reply.
‘My club comes first, same as Nemo is for you.’
He pushed Morgan in the chest to emphasise the point. Morgan slipped on the tiles and Teddy walked on.
The following week, he played for the county hurlers. Phone calls were made. He was holding out for an apology. He and Morgan met and had it out. A Mexican standoff would emerge and he went back to football.
McCarthy becomes the third player from the 1990 Cork side to pass away after Mick McCarthy in 1998, and John Kerins in 2001.
His own early life was forged in hardship. He lost his father, Denis, when he was just four. With eight children, times were tough and tight. Ireland was also a different place and neighbours and friends looked out for each other. His first pair of Gola football boots were gifted to him by a neighbour.
His signature skill was his fetch. His athletic ability for the time was awesome, even in an era of elegant midfielders. Numerous pictures capture the moment of him in full flight.
It’s how he will live on in the memory. Teddy Boy.
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