WIN OR LOSE last Sunday, this week’s column was going to about the Cork U20 hurling team I’ve been lucky to be involved with this season. That’s another day’s job now.
The text informing of Teddy McCarthy’s death came on Tuesday evening and that’s where my thoughts have been since. The same is true for most people in Cork GAA I’d say – and further afield. Teddy’s achievements carried weight well beyond his home place.
At first you hope it’s not true. A lot of stuff without substance goes around on WhatsApp, but it soon became clear that we had indeed lost the player with probably the greatest singular achievement in men’s GAA: winning an All-Ireland hurling and football medal in the same year.
He did what is barely possible. If Teddy Mac scaled Everest, then I by comparison ran out of air in the foothills.
I was on both Cork minor panels and played a Munster championship game for the footballers against Waterford . . . well, the first 20 minutes before I was whipped off.
From then on it was clear I had to choose. It was one of those situations where I was investing time and effort but making little progress. Training sessions five nights a week didn’t stop the feeling that I was always in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I was down the pecking order to get in goal for the hurlers so football had to go at that young age. There was the other matter of the Leaving Cert which wasn’t being treated with the respect it warranted.
So, before my 18th birthday that was my dual ambition done for. I’ve seen senior teammates give it an unbelievable rattle – Aidan Walsh and Eoin Cadogan – but to match Teddy’s achievement today you’d need limitless energy, an understanding boss and partner, two management teams with an unusual proclivity towards cooperation, enough talent to get on either team, avoid the injuries that would be more likely with the increased load . . . and then Cork would have to win the All-Ireland in both sports in a given year. I’ll let someone who specialises in probability run the numbers.
Perhaps it was slightly more feasible in Teddy’s day but the more I read about his club commitments, the U21s and compromised rules games, I’m not so sure. The Occam’s razor explanation is that he was simply an extraordinary athlete. A one off.
By the time I started watching games, Teddy was just finishing up. I learned about his deeds through reading and watching the old videos. I think I got to understand him through playing with his son, Cian, for the Cork senior hurling team.
Cian is a naturally gifted hurler, brave and tough. His father’s son. The grittier the game got the more he relished it. Any time you needed someone to win a puckout you could aim it his way knowing that he’d either gain possession or burst himself and anyone in his way trying.
In a team meeting once we were discussing how we’d prepare mentally for a game. I said I thought about it a lot, possibly too much for my own good. Conor O’Sullivan said he would focus on his own preparation and wouldn’t consider the contest until the ball was in.
Cian said he’d get out the tapes of old Cork matches. He’d revel in the heroes, the passion, the great deeds of all of those who’d gone before us in the red jersey. He’d take inspiration from every comeback and score and sea of red behind the goals in games long since passed.
You could feel the energy in the room rise when he spoke. It all meant so much to Cian. He was essentially the most passionate Cork supporter around, and he just so happened to have the chops to play for the team.
He landed a generation out from his time, a 90s hurler playing in the 2010s he’d joke. All he wanted was the ball to be pucked up to him so he could fight like a dog and flake it over the bar. Himself and Christopher Joyce would tear strips off each other in training, fairly intense stuff with timber flying everywhere. But then they went back to being best friends as soon as it was over. This was just their way of getting up for a game.
I wish we’d won that All-Ireland in 2013 for a lot of reasons, one of them is Cian. It would have meant a great deal to emulate his father, but it wasn’t to be. There are more important things than medals and you could see the joy Teddy got out of seeing Cian play for Cork on the times you’d meet him around.
We never spoke much beyond the odd handshake and few words that went with it.
Our main interaction came away from Cork duty. Teddy was over Bandon and I was playing out the field, at centre-back, for Kanturk. His management career was not in the echelon of his playing time but he had his moments – one came at my expense that day.
He sent a fast lad my way to run me all over the place. As this was happening Teddy let the odd roar in at me, delighted at the spectacle I was making of myself. I eventually snapped and lashed back at my marker – I was lucky not to be sent off in truth.
“You got me there,” I said to Teddy afterwards. We had a bit of a chat. I resolved to myself I wouldn’t get wound up like that again. He had my number.
The thought that we’ll never see him around the place again is surreal. He’s one of quite a few legends around Cork, humble people, you’d never know what they’d done, unless you know.
That clip with Marty Morrissey, Tomás Mulcahy, Larry Tompkins and himself from a couple of years back is gold.
“Did it change your life?” Marty asks, “. . . to be that dual star.”
“. . . Well, have one look at me Marty,” he deadpans, stood there in his shorts and polo shirt. “What do you think?”
In 1990 Cork won the Double-both All Ireland’s. Tomorrow on The Today Show (3.30)on RTÉ 1 I’m joined by All Ireland Winning Captains @tomas_mulcahy Larry Tompkins & Dual Legend Teddy Mc Carthy..we had a great laugh 😂 @RTEgaa @officialgaa @OfficialCorkGAA @RTEToday @daithi_ose pic.twitter.com/LNkKIV6hIN
— Marty Morrissey (@MartyM_RTE) September 24, 2020
The timing, self-deprecating humour and divilment in his smile – it’s all there. The laughter from Larry and Tomás shows you how much he was loved.
Thirty years previous on that field he’d achieved the scarcely believable, but that was no reason to take yourself too seriously.
For the rest of us, though, his achievement is extraordinary. And as with all of the greats, it’s not just what they did but how they did it. Teddy was one of the main men for the hurlers and footballers, a game changer in either code.
He had grace of movement allied to tenacity, determination backed up by confidence. He played like someone who never experienced a moment of self-doubt in himself or his teammates. Kerry’s golden generation of footballers, the Meath team of the late 80s, Galway’s magnificent hurlers of the same era. It didn’t matter who you were, he’d be doing his thing, relentless.
Rip Teddy Mc #CorkGaa pic.twitter.com/Rh2XyRE43W
— Graham Whelton (@DepecheMoby) June 6, 2023
And what a thing it was. Of his many attributes, his fielding in either code elevated him to the realm of the heroic. The pictures from then tell the stories that wouldn’t be believed if they were passed down by word of mouth. Legs coiled after the spring, arms aloft as he soars above the swinging hurleys, the ball gliding towards his hand.
Those are the moments he’ll forever inhabit in the mind of Cork supporters. Between Heaven and here, at a height nobody could reach.