THESE DAYS, JOE McCarthy and his brother Paddy enjoy barging into enemy territory and causing havoc on the rugby pitch.
But they’ve been at this kind of thing for a long time.
Their father, Joe Sr, originally hails from Castletownbere and the family would head from Dublin to the West Cork town every August for the annual Festival of the Sea and Regatta, which is a riot of rowing, net mending, sea angling, music, food, and all sorts of family fun.
The McCarthy boys had one priority every year: to dominate the Pig ’n' Pole competition down in the harbour. They were big dogs in the U17 bracket.
It basically involves telephone poles being positioned out over the water and greased up to make them slippery. The contestants shimmy out with a pillow in hand and proceed to batter each other until someone falls into the water.
“It was a bit crazy,” says 24-year-old Joe as he goes down memory lane while we sit at Ireland’s pre-Six Nations training base in The Campus in Quinta do Lago.
“Me and Paddy actually won the thing a few times. I think people didn’t really like it in Cork because we were two Dublin lads coming up and winning it.”
Those summer days in Castletownbere remain some of the best times McCarthy has had. The family trips would also usually involve staying in Cashel in Tipperary, where their mother, Paula, is from.
There wasn’t quite as much excitement there, but McCarthy enjoyed visits to the Rock of Cashel and getting out of Dublin in those idyllic summer months.
Most of the time, the McCarthy lads channelled their rambunctious behaviour into rugby, which got an early grip on Joe and Paddy, as well as their older brother, Andrew, who plays for the Seapoint Dragons, who cater to kids and adults with additional needs. Andrew is also a culture captain with Leinster.
It’s no surprise that when they weren’t battering other people, the McCarthy boys turned on each other. Paddy, two years younger than Joe, was a particularly good wrestler and did Muay Thai at school, so the fights could get “pretty brutal,” according to Joe.
It stood them in good stead as young fellas, he reckons, but they haven’t locked horns in a few years now.
“It could have been maybe during COVID, when you’re kind of stuck in your house. I remember we were playing Rugby 20 [the video game], fighting over that.
“We don’t get too physical anymore. We try to keep ourselves OK for the pitch.”
Joseph McCarthy is tackled by Jack Boyle in 2019. Laszlo Geczo / INPHO
Laszlo Geczo / INPHO / INPHO
Family photos of the McCarthys after Leinster and Ireland games show that their parents aren’t huge people, so it has been unclear why Joe and Paddy are such powerful specimens.
It turns out that it comes from Paula’s side. Her father, the late Andy Fogarty, played in an All-Ireland U20 hurling final for Tipperary, while Paula’s brother, Andrew, was a big influence on Joe and Paddy as their love for training developed.
Andrew Fogarty was a competitive weightlifter who won a few medals in his time.
“He’s about 6’4” and he was about 130 kg at his peak, super strong,” says McCarthy.
“He lifted into his 40s, but we thought he was so cool when we were younger. He loved his weights and even now, I’ll ring him the odd time and he’ll ask me what weights I’m lifting and he loves hearing what kind of training we’re doing in the gym. He’s got a good mindset.”
McCarthy learned lots from his uncle about getting stronger and bigger, although he stopped short of copying his habit of adding 10 eggs to his post-workout shakes.
There was a bit of basketball and Gaelic football on his dad’s side of the family, but Joe Sr wasn’t the sporty type.
“My dad’s not that tall. He’s quite lean as well, not heavy, doesn’t eat too much food. He watches his diet very carefully. Me and Paddy can eat a bit more!
“My dad loves rugby now. He’s probably getting better at his knowledge. My parents absolutely love the games, so they have a great time out of it. They have travelled everywhere and they’re class with the support.”
Rugby had no place in the McCarthy family story until the lads took it up with the minis at Blackrock College RFC’s Stradbrook grounds. They were obssessed from early on and after starting in the back row, Joe’s height meant he was soon playing in the second row.
Everyone around them was rugby crazy, so it rubbed off on the McCarthys as they went on into Blackrock College for secondary school.
“My parents would have been Munster fans because they’re both from Munster,” says Joe.
“I was kind of a Munster fan when I was five or six, apparently my parents indoctrinated me but then instantly, I think the first day or two in school, we were like, ‘We need to be Leinster fans to fit in here,’ so that’s what happened.”
The McCarthys after Joe's Ireland debut in November 2022. Dan Sheridan / INPHO
Dan Sheridan / INPHO / INPHO
Although he loved the game, McCarthy struggled to stand out in Blackrock. He wasn’t a first-team player until he was in sixth year.
“I was really serious, even in Junior Cup when they gave you your diet to follow,” he says. “I’d follow it so strictly. But I was a good bit smaller back then.
“I was a bit of a late developer. But I was absolutely gutted because I didn’t even make the Junior Cup panel when I was in third year when I really wanted to make it. It was a big squad, probably 46 players.
“Then I would have been on lower teams after that in fourth and fifth year, but I always loved it. Even when I was training in the gym, I would have thought that I want this to make me better at rugby.
“And then when I made the Senior Cup squad in sixth year, that was such a big achievement. I was so delighted with that. I was so chuffed just to be in the squad.”
McCarthy ended up being a starter in his final year at school and he credits one of his Blackrock coaches as having a major impact on shaping him into the kind of player he is with Leinster and Ireland.
Seamus Toomey, who is now the IRFU’s performance pathway scrum coach, was in charge of Blackrock’s forwards and he saw the potential in McCarthy. Toomey told him, ‘You can be a great set-piece forward.’
He challenged McCarthy to bring grunt in the scrum, even though teams can only push for one metre in the Irish schools game, while McCarthy recalls the heavy-duty maul sessions in school with Toomey.
“They were so intense and he’d always get older students who had gone through the school, a couple of years older, to come down for the maul sessions,” says McCarthy.
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“I actually remember Tom Clarkson came down, he was a year older than me. So I’d love those maul sessions.”
McCarthy had found his niche.
The combination of his enjoyment of the physical stuff and a focus on the technical skills of the less glamorous parts of rugby would soon be paying dividends.
As Paul O’Connell, the Ireland forwards coach reminded McCarthy just this week, “If you love doing something, you’ll do it well.’
McCarthy has learned lots from Paul O'Connell. Dan Sheridan / INPHO
Dan Sheridan / INPHO / INPHO
McCarthy praises Leinster forwards coach Robin McBryde for his open-mindedness in helping players to use their ‘superstrengths,’ while O’Connell has been an obvious influence.
Indeed, McCarthy sometimes struggles to get O’Connell out of his head even when he’s not in Ireland camp.
“Paulie made me a way better lineout jumper, 100%. He’s always on you – jumping, lifting, all your technical bits.
“Every single training session, say with your warm-up reps, little bits before training, he’s critiquing everything you do.
“So you’re almost a bit feared-up of yourself if I maybe leak my foot, or if my jump shape is a bit off. He’ll pull you up on it. Even when I find myself back at Leinster, I’m thinking to myself that Paulie would be onto me with a clip of this if I didn’t do it properly, so that’s huge. I find he really pushes that.”
Before he got into the professional side of the game, McCarthy learned valuable lessons at the coalface in the All-Ireland League with Trinity.
He finished school and was involved with the Leinster U19s, but hadn’t had a place in Leinster’s sub-academy confirmed when he began to make an impact with the AIL club. He had one U20s game before Tony Smeeth put him straight into Trinity’s senior team.
“The AIL was so important for me,” says McCarthy.
“I thought it was the coolest thing ever playing for Trinity in the AIL against men. It develops you quite quickly because I was 18 and you’re playing against some 30-year-olds or 35-year-olds and you’re thinking, ‘This is a bit crazy.’”
McCarthy was soon asked into the Leinster sub-academy for the 2019/20 season and played for the Ireland U20s despite being a year young. They won three from three in the Six Nations before the pandemic cut the championship short.
He missed the following year’s U20 Six Nations because of a serious hamstring injury that required surgery and meant six months out of action.
McCarthy playing for Trinity in 2021. Tom Maher / INPHO
Tom Maher / INPHO / INPHO
He put that time to very good use, adding over 8kg of weight to his 6ft 6ins frame. Clarkson had the same injury at the same time, so he and McCarthy threw themselves into weights and eating under the guidance of then-Leinster rehab coach Gordon Brett.
“It probably ended up being one of the better things that happened to me, to be honest.
“I came back faster, more explosive, I could jump better.
“I don’t think I would have been as good if I didn’t have that injury. I came back a different player.”
McCarthy has since put on another 5kg in size to take him to his current 125kg.
And he has been throwing his weight around with glee for Leinster, Ireland, and the Lions pretty much ever since he returned from that hamstring injury, picked up where he left off with Trinity and got his provincial debut in January 2022.
He made the best of his latest spell on the sidelines in the wake of the Lions tour last summer, rehabbing a foot injury and getting a few other parts of his body into better nick. That meant he returned for Leinster in impressive fashion in December.
He’s not looking too far into the future but knows he needs to keep layering up his game. McCarthy says he wants to play the best rugby of his career in the upcoming Six Nations.
When he feels he has had a good game, it tends to be down to the scrum, lineout and maul going well, winning penalties in those areas or giving the backs a nice platform. He looks at whether he pressured the opposition’s exits enough. He examines whether he slowed down their breakdown. He likes to check his post-contact metres in the carry, as well as the impact he has had in the tackle.
He is pushing himself to keep improving his handling, offloading, and decision-making skills. He is getting better at things like judging when the scrum-half is going to deliver the ball, meaning he can hold his feet before accelerating onto the pass.
McCarthy also loves being involved in Leinster and Ireland’s attacking set-piece plays when they use him on second or third phase, not something that many teams do with their big second rows.
But it’s still the nuts-and-bolts work of a tighthead lock that makes McCarthy happy.
“I find it funny because when my parents review my game, they might think that if I haven’t made a 50-metre linebreak, they’re like, ‘Yeah, you went alright.’ But I would be like, ‘Oh, I felt like I was class there.’”
McCarthy at Ireland's training camp in Portugal. Ben Brady / INPHO
Ben Brady / INPHO / INPHO
He’ll be keen to remain disciplined for Ireland, avoiding any repeats of last year’s yellow card against France in Dublin, but McCarthy will be looking to cause havoc for the opposition at every turn.
He wants to bring a new level of physicality against les Bleus.
“I think you can talk about the intricacies of attack and defence, or you can have a really good plan for a breakdown and all that, but no matter what coach I’ve had, physicality underpins all of that.
“Some coaches call it the master key – physicality unlocks everything else.”
So McCarthy will be looking to cause havoc for the opposition over the coming weeks.
“I probably would like to pride myself on people saying, ‘Jeez, I hate playing against him,’” says McCarthy.
“In the NFL, with defensive players, I love guys like Maxx Crosby. They have a term in the NFL, they call them game wreckers. They’re the guys who can wreck a game, so I like to have that kind of mindset.”
Not much has changed since those days in Castletownbere.
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'I'd like to pride myself on people saying, ‘I hate playing against him'
THESE DAYS, JOE McCarthy and his brother Paddy enjoy barging into enemy territory and causing havoc on the rugby pitch.
But they’ve been at this kind of thing for a long time.
Their father, Joe Sr, originally hails from Castletownbere and the family would head from Dublin to the West Cork town every August for the annual Festival of the Sea and Regatta, which is a riot of rowing, net mending, sea angling, music, food, and all sorts of family fun.
The McCarthy boys had one priority every year: to dominate the Pig ’n' Pole competition down in the harbour. They were big dogs in the U17 bracket.
It basically involves telephone poles being positioned out over the water and greased up to make them slippery. The contestants shimmy out with a pillow in hand and proceed to batter each other until someone falls into the water.
“It was a bit crazy,” says 24-year-old Joe as he goes down memory lane while we sit at Ireland’s pre-Six Nations training base in The Campus in Quinta do Lago.
“Me and Paddy actually won the thing a few times. I think people didn’t really like it in Cork because we were two Dublin lads coming up and winning it.”
Those summer days in Castletownbere remain some of the best times McCarthy has had. The family trips would also usually involve staying in Cashel in Tipperary, where their mother, Paula, is from.
There wasn’t quite as much excitement there, but McCarthy enjoyed visits to the Rock of Cashel and getting out of Dublin in those idyllic summer months.
Most of the time, the McCarthy lads channelled their rambunctious behaviour into rugby, which got an early grip on Joe and Paddy, as well as their older brother, Andrew, who plays for the Seapoint Dragons, who cater to kids and adults with additional needs. Andrew is also a culture captain with Leinster.
It’s no surprise that when they weren’t battering other people, the McCarthy boys turned on each other. Paddy, two years younger than Joe, was a particularly good wrestler and did Muay Thai at school, so the fights could get “pretty brutal,” according to Joe.
It stood them in good stead as young fellas, he reckons, but they haven’t locked horns in a few years now.
“It could have been maybe during COVID, when you’re kind of stuck in your house. I remember we were playing Rugby 20 [the video game], fighting over that.
“We don’t get too physical anymore. We try to keep ourselves OK for the pitch.”
Family photos of the McCarthys after Leinster and Ireland games show that their parents aren’t huge people, so it has been unclear why Joe and Paddy are such powerful specimens.
It turns out that it comes from Paula’s side. Her father, the late Andy Fogarty, played in an All-Ireland U20 hurling final for Tipperary, while Paula’s brother, Andrew, was a big influence on Joe and Paddy as their love for training developed.
Andrew Fogarty was a competitive weightlifter who won a few medals in his time.
“He’s about 6’4” and he was about 130 kg at his peak, super strong,” says McCarthy.
“He lifted into his 40s, but we thought he was so cool when we were younger. He loved his weights and even now, I’ll ring him the odd time and he’ll ask me what weights I’m lifting and he loves hearing what kind of training we’re doing in the gym. He’s got a good mindset.”
McCarthy learned lots from his uncle about getting stronger and bigger, although he stopped short of copying his habit of adding 10 eggs to his post-workout shakes.
There was a bit of basketball and Gaelic football on his dad’s side of the family, but Joe Sr wasn’t the sporty type.
“My dad’s not that tall. He’s quite lean as well, not heavy, doesn’t eat too much food. He watches his diet very carefully. Me and Paddy can eat a bit more!
“My dad loves rugby now. He’s probably getting better at his knowledge. My parents absolutely love the games, so they have a great time out of it. They have travelled everywhere and they’re class with the support.”
Rugby had no place in the McCarthy family story until the lads took it up with the minis at Blackrock College RFC’s Stradbrook grounds. They were obssessed from early on and after starting in the back row, Joe’s height meant he was soon playing in the second row.
Everyone around them was rugby crazy, so it rubbed off on the McCarthys as they went on into Blackrock College for secondary school.
“My parents would have been Munster fans because they’re both from Munster,” says Joe.
“I was kind of a Munster fan when I was five or six, apparently my parents indoctrinated me but then instantly, I think the first day or two in school, we were like, ‘We need to be Leinster fans to fit in here,’ so that’s what happened.”
Although he loved the game, McCarthy struggled to stand out in Blackrock. He wasn’t a first-team player until he was in sixth year.
“I was really serious, even in Junior Cup when they gave you your diet to follow,” he says. “I’d follow it so strictly. But I was a good bit smaller back then.
“I was a bit of a late developer. But I was absolutely gutted because I didn’t even make the Junior Cup panel when I was in third year when I really wanted to make it. It was a big squad, probably 46 players.
“Then I would have been on lower teams after that in fourth and fifth year, but I always loved it. Even when I was training in the gym, I would have thought that I want this to make me better at rugby.
“And then when I made the Senior Cup squad in sixth year, that was such a big achievement. I was so delighted with that. I was so chuffed just to be in the squad.”
McCarthy ended up being a starter in his final year at school and he credits one of his Blackrock coaches as having a major impact on shaping him into the kind of player he is with Leinster and Ireland.
Seamus Toomey, who is now the IRFU’s performance pathway scrum coach, was in charge of Blackrock’s forwards and he saw the potential in McCarthy. Toomey told him, ‘You can be a great set-piece forward.’
He challenged McCarthy to bring grunt in the scrum, even though teams can only push for one metre in the Irish schools game, while McCarthy recalls the heavy-duty maul sessions in school with Toomey.
“They were so intense and he’d always get older students who had gone through the school, a couple of years older, to come down for the maul sessions,” says McCarthy.
“I actually remember Tom Clarkson came down, he was a year older than me. So I’d love those maul sessions.”
McCarthy had found his niche.
The combination of his enjoyment of the physical stuff and a focus on the technical skills of the less glamorous parts of rugby would soon be paying dividends.
As Paul O’Connell, the Ireland forwards coach reminded McCarthy just this week, “If you love doing something, you’ll do it well.’
McCarthy praises Leinster forwards coach Robin McBryde for his open-mindedness in helping players to use their ‘superstrengths,’ while O’Connell has been an obvious influence.
Indeed, McCarthy sometimes struggles to get O’Connell out of his head even when he’s not in Ireland camp.
“Paulie made me a way better lineout jumper, 100%. He’s always on you – jumping, lifting, all your technical bits.
“Every single training session, say with your warm-up reps, little bits before training, he’s critiquing everything you do.
“So you’re almost a bit feared-up of yourself if I maybe leak my foot, or if my jump shape is a bit off. He’ll pull you up on it. Even when I find myself back at Leinster, I’m thinking to myself that Paulie would be onto me with a clip of this if I didn’t do it properly, so that’s huge. I find he really pushes that.”
Before he got into the professional side of the game, McCarthy learned valuable lessons at the coalface in the All-Ireland League with Trinity.
He finished school and was involved with the Leinster U19s, but hadn’t had a place in Leinster’s sub-academy confirmed when he began to make an impact with the AIL club. He had one U20s game before Tony Smeeth put him straight into Trinity’s senior team.
“The AIL was so important for me,” says McCarthy.
“I thought it was the coolest thing ever playing for Trinity in the AIL against men. It develops you quite quickly because I was 18 and you’re playing against some 30-year-olds or 35-year-olds and you’re thinking, ‘This is a bit crazy.’”
McCarthy was soon asked into the Leinster sub-academy for the 2019/20 season and played for the Ireland U20s despite being a year young. They won three from three in the Six Nations before the pandemic cut the championship short.
He missed the following year’s U20 Six Nations because of a serious hamstring injury that required surgery and meant six months out of action.
He put that time to very good use, adding over 8kg of weight to his 6ft 6ins frame. Clarkson had the same injury at the same time, so he and McCarthy threw themselves into weights and eating under the guidance of then-Leinster rehab coach Gordon Brett.
“It probably ended up being one of the better things that happened to me, to be honest.
“I came back faster, more explosive, I could jump better.
“I don’t think I would have been as good if I didn’t have that injury. I came back a different player.”
McCarthy has since put on another 5kg in size to take him to his current 125kg.
And he has been throwing his weight around with glee for Leinster, Ireland, and the Lions pretty much ever since he returned from that hamstring injury, picked up where he left off with Trinity and got his provincial debut in January 2022.
He made the best of his latest spell on the sidelines in the wake of the Lions tour last summer, rehabbing a foot injury and getting a few other parts of his body into better nick. That meant he returned for Leinster in impressive fashion in December.
He’s not looking too far into the future but knows he needs to keep layering up his game. McCarthy says he wants to play the best rugby of his career in the upcoming Six Nations.
When he feels he has had a good game, it tends to be down to the scrum, lineout and maul going well, winning penalties in those areas or giving the backs a nice platform. He looks at whether he pressured the opposition’s exits enough. He examines whether he slowed down their breakdown. He likes to check his post-contact metres in the carry, as well as the impact he has had in the tackle.
He is pushing himself to keep improving his handling, offloading, and decision-making skills. He is getting better at things like judging when the scrum-half is going to deliver the ball, meaning he can hold his feet before accelerating onto the pass.
McCarthy also loves being involved in Leinster and Ireland’s attacking set-piece plays when they use him on second or third phase, not something that many teams do with their big second rows.
But it’s still the nuts-and-bolts work of a tighthead lock that makes McCarthy happy.
“I find it funny because when my parents review my game, they might think that if I haven’t made a 50-metre linebreak, they’re like, ‘Yeah, you went alright.’ But I would be like, ‘Oh, I felt like I was class there.’”
He’ll be keen to remain disciplined for Ireland, avoiding any repeats of last year’s yellow card against France in Dublin, but McCarthy will be looking to cause havoc for the opposition at every turn.
He wants to bring a new level of physicality against les Bleus.
“I think you can talk about the intricacies of attack and defence, or you can have a really good plan for a breakdown and all that, but no matter what coach I’ve had, physicality underpins all of that.
“Some coaches call it the master key – physicality unlocks everything else.”
So McCarthy will be looking to cause havoc for the opposition over the coming weeks.
“I probably would like to pride myself on people saying, ‘Jeez, I hate playing against him,’” says McCarthy.
“In the NFL, with defensive players, I love guys like Maxx Crosby. They have a term in the NFL, they call them game wreckers. They’re the guys who can wreck a game, so I like to have that kind of mindset.”
Not much has changed since those days in Castletownbere.
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Six Nations Cork game wrecker Ireland Joe McCarthy Tipperary