WHILE IT ENDED in crushing disappointment for him and his international team-mates, Leinster and Ireland second row Joe McCarthy is still able to reflect positively on his experience of the Rugby World Cup in France.
The youngest member of the squad at just 22 years of age, McCarthy played the full 80 minutes in Ireland’s emphatic 82-8 victory over Romania in their opening game of the tournament and even managed to bag a final-quarter try for good measure.
He didn’t feature in their remaining pool encounters, but was named on the bench for their quarter-final showdown with New Zealand at Stade de France after his Leinster colleague James Ryan was ruled out through injury.
He subsequently appeared off the bench in the 59th minute, but ultimately couldn’t prevent Ireland from suffering another World Cup quarter-final defeat.
Yet given his international career is very much in its infancy – he picked up his fifth senior cap in the New Zealand game – the young lock reaped significant benefit from being part of an Irish camp for an extended period of time.
“It was fantastic up until how it ended. I learned a lot. You are with all the world class players for 24 hours a day almost. You see how guys prepare for games because you are with them the whole week. The bits of video they do, the recovery work, things like that. It was an intensive learning block for eight weeks,” McCarthy acknowledged.
“You work with all the coaches, especially Paul O’Connell for me. He is like the best person you can learn off. He would sit down with me and we would talk about everything, trends in the game, or he will pull up a clip.
“I am always working on my lineout. It would be a big thing for me to become a better jumper. Calling, line-out defence.
“Those areas are your main core skills as a second row. It was great being in camp for the whole time because every training session, he’d have a clip for me. He would help me work on my core skills, which are very important.”
McCarthy was speaking at Leinster’s base in UCD earlier this week in advance of their visit to Dragons in the United Rugby Championship on Sunday. Having initially returned to training last week, he is expected to be named in the province’s match day 23 later this afternoon for the weekend trip to Rodney Parade.
There is every chance he will be joined by another member of the McCarthy clan as his younger brother Paddy has featured off the bench as a loosehead prop in their three games to date in the URC this season.
A key part of the Ireland U20s side that secured a Six Nations Grand Slam earlier this year, Paddy (who is in year one of the Leinster Academy) was also a key figure in their march to the World Rugby U20 Championship decider in July.
“I think we were almost spending too much time together, having him home and in training now. I suppose it’s something we’ve probably talked about, it would be just class to play together and train together. It has been weird having him in, but it has been great,” Joe said of his brother.
“You see that there is a few sets of brothers in Leinster. There’s the Byrnes [Ross and Harry] and there’s the Osbornes [Jamie and Andrew]. We’d usually talk everything about rugby together. We’d talk about what was going on in training and different things. It has been nice.”
Interestingly, McCarthy’s return to the Leinster squad last week coincided with another of his brothers – Andrew – being welcomed into the province in the role of ‘culture captain’. As part of Energia’s Rugby for All initiative, Andrew (who has Down Syndrome) was integrated into the set-up ahead of their match against Edinburgh last Saturday.
Across a full week, he had the opportunity to connect with the players, coaches and staff of Leinster, gaining first-hand experience of what it is like to be part of a professional rugby environment. Andrew has been a playing member of Seapoint Dragons – a disability tag rugby team – for a number of years and Joe was delighted to see him linking up with the squad as part of this initiative.
“He was in sitting up in the changing rooms, helping the kit man out before the game and everything. Don’t think he was much use at that!
“He loved it, he was buzzing because I was watching the game in the dugout with all the players and he was in with us. He’s a massive sports fan,” McCarthy added.
“I think it was a pretty good initiative from Energia to have him in showing that sport is accessible for everyone. He was buzzing being in for the week and I think the lads enjoyed having him around. It was kind of a good vibe and he got a lot out of it.”