THERE AREN’T MANY second rows who get used as the strike weapon in their team’s set-piece plays.
Usually, it’s the flashier backs or explosive back rows who attack coaches design their strike moves around.
But when you’ve got a big lock who can move like Joe McCarthy, there’s sense in teeing him up for a shot at being the one to make the linebreak.
The example below comes against Leicester Tigers in the pool stages of the Champions Cup, with Robbie Henshaw carrying in midfield on first phase of the lineout attack.
Leinster immediately swing back against the grain in an 11 pattern with scrum-half Jamison Gibson-Park scooting to the right but then leaving the ball up for McCarthy to strike close to the breakdown.
The 6ft 6ins, 124kg lock thunders into the space Gibson-Park has helped create and though Jasper Wiese catches McCarthy from behind, Leinster are in behind Leicester.
The next example comes in the Round of 16 clash between the same teams and again from a right-hand-side lineout.
We can see below that McCarthy [5] is part of the dummy movement to the front of the lineout before Leinster play off the top and hit up Henshaw on a screen play.
In the meantime, McCarthy, hooker Dan Sheehan, and tighthead prop Tadhg Furlong are working very hard to get around the corner for the second phase of this play.
They cover lots of ground at speed to be in position as Gibson-Park picks and scoots to his left, interesting defenders before he passes out the back of Furlong to Sheehan.
As we see above, Sheehan then plays a slick pass out the back of Caelan Doris to McCarthy and the big second row scorches through the tackle attempt of Leicester centre Dan Kelly, who has initially been attracted in by Doris’s decoy run.
McCarthy has the pace and power to beat Kelly’s attempted recovery tackle and he surges through the Tigers defence. He then has the poise in behind to find Gibson-Park, who has worked up ahead of the ball on the inside.
This is not a position we see many locks in, particularly heavier tighthead locks like McCarthy.
He is a fairly unique specimen who combines size and grunt in the tight with mobility and speed around the pitch. McCarthy has been on the radar for a couple of seasons but this campaign has seen a real breakthrough for the 23-year-old.
It started by making Ireland’s World Cup squad, then making an impression in France, and has continued by McCarthy becoming a first-choice player for Leinster and Ireland.
There are elements of his game that require polishing – a missed lineout lift here, a frustrating penalty concession there – but how he plays on the edge is a strength too. McCarthy brings welcome chaos to his work in the carry, tackle, maul, and ruck. He’s a nuisance to play against.
As Leinster look towards the Champions Cup final against Toulouse tomorrow, McCarthy is one of the reasons for their supporters to be excited.
This will be his second final appearance, with McCarthy having played four minutes off the bench in the defeat to La Rochelle in the 2022 decider in Marseille. That was only his ninth senior cap for Leinster and he remembers it as a bit of a whirlwind.
“It definitely was because I’d only made my debut in January that year so I hadn’t really thought I’d be playing in the Champions Cup or in a final,” says McCarthy.
“It was kind of surreal at the time. I feel very lucky to be in a final again because it’s not easy to win those or get to that position again.
“Once we’d lost that, you don’t know how long it will be until you get another opportunity so I feel very lucky to get another chance to go again.”
Last season, McCarthy had only returned from injury the weekend before the Champions Cup final so he missed out on involvement against La Rochelle that time as Jason Jenkins took the second row bench slot.
McCarthy has played a big role in getting Leinster to this final, starting six of their seven games so far. He’s expected to start again tomorrow against Toulouse.
He recalls watching Leinster’s famous 2011 final against Northampton when he was 10.
“I remember being at communions and stuff and watching Leinster winning their first Champions Cups, getting stuck into some Munster uncles and that!”
But the dream of playing for Leinster had started earlier than 2011.
“Dad has a video of me and my brother fighting in my room,” says McCarthy. “It’s around 2009 and on my wall, I would have had a picture of Leinster winning the Champions Cup in 2009.”
McCarthy’s parents, Joe and Paula, will be in London tomorrow, as will his two brothers, Andrew and Leinster academy prop Paddy. There will be extended family at the game too, with some of Joe’s London-based cousins getting involved.
McCarthy is looking forward to getting stuck into mammoth Toulouse lock Emmanuel Meafou and their other stars, but there’s no sense that he will be overawed by this occasion.
He respects Toulouse and their great tradition but McCarthy is more concerned with helping Leinser to write a bit of new history.
“We’ve loads of experience in the group but there’s loads of players who haven’t won a European Cup or gone to that level.
“So it definitely feels like as a group we want to take that next step and win a trophy, so we’re all buzzing about this new territory of trying to win it.”
