Teddy McCarthy's legacy lives on, but reunions have another empty chair

Teddy McCarthy's sons Cian and Niall shoulder the coffin of their father from the funeral home in Glanmire, Cork. Picture: Dan Linehan

The applause began as Teddy McCarthy’s funeral cortege turned up the switchback road to St Joseph’s Church in Glanmire, Cork.

Those lining the streets nearby in club and county tops and jerseys were giving a final salute to the man whose sudden passing on Tuesday stopped a county in its tracks. 

When the hearse turned into the churchyard high above they all climbed the steep slope for the funeral Mass.

Glanmire was damp for the ceremonies, cloudy and grey. 

This was significant, not for a bad novelist’s sense of the pathetic fallacy, but because the man being carried to his final rest was, for many in attendance, synonymous with the highest of high summers.

Blazing sunshine and the tar melting on the road out of Killarney, as you hustled uphill with your ice cream, the grass almost burnt in Fitzgerald Stadium.

Or the punishment of the heat as you mounted the railway bridge in Thurles and saw the Old Stand in the distance.

Those are some of the places associated with Teddy McCarthy, places that derive their power and standing in the imagination because of him, and others like him. 

Frank Murphy, former secretary, Cork GAA County Board, delivers the graveside oration at Rathcooney Cemetery after requiem Mass at St Joseph's Church, Glanmire. Picture: Larry Cummins

It is close to a cliché to point out the layers of legend generated by individuals coming from places all over Ireland to those venues, there to perform wonders that make their names live forever.

And to pull the names of their home places into immortality with them. 

Cloyne and Ballyhale, Glenswilly and Knockcroghery, Holycross and Castlegar. 

These are the little towns and villages which become forever synonymous not just with a few matches or a great score, but with one man’s name.

Teddy McCarthy did that for Glanmire and Riverstown, and the people of those places paid tribute to him on Saturday.

Fifty years ago Kenneth Griffith made a film about Michael Collins, Hang Up Your Brightest Colours. The people in Teddy’s home place took that advice to heart on Saturday, with Sarsfields’ blue, white, and black, the green and gold of Glanmire, and Cork’s red and white visible along the route taken by the cortege, and hanging even from the house overlooking the churchyard itself.

Many of those lining the roads had clearly journeyed over the years to support him, with his clubs and county — how well those clubs performed in organising everything, by the way — and on this particular morning, they wanted to show that support for him again.

And for his family. In the sweep of throng and tribute to such a well-known individual, their loved ones can sometimes be forgotten in the press of memories. 

In that context, the solidarity with the McCarthy family expressed by their home place and the county at large carried an extra charge. 

The outpouring of sympathy will hopefully be of some nourishment to his family in time to come.

In Glanmire and Riverstown there were quite a few of Teddy McCarthy’s old adversaries visible.

Meath was represented in force on Friday evening. 

Tipperary arrived in numbers the same day. 

Kerry came, and Down, and Galway. 

The men who barred the way to him all over Ireland had come from all over Ireland to say goodbye.

The men who togged out in dressing rooms alongside Teddy were also on hand. 

Teammates from his time with Sars, Glanmire, and Cork were plentiful, many of them looking at, or near, their fighting weight. 

Some hairlines have changed and the snow on a few mountaintops looks permanent, but the outlines were still there, still visible.

Tánaiste Micheál Martin speaking with Con Murphy at the funeral Mass for Teddy McCarthy at St Joseph’s Church, Springhill, Glanmire, Cork. Picture: Dan Linehan

Teddy’s passing breaks another chain for his Cork colleagues. 

The football team which won the Double has already lost John Kerins and Michael McCarthy, and the third man gone reduces the ranks of the 1990 hurlers by one as well. 

The achievement still resounds through the decades, but now the reunions have another empty chair.

At the end of the funeral Mass, the coffin came out to one song, and it could only have been one song. 

The 'Banks of My Own Lovely Lee' is nobody’s idea of a terrace chant designed to make a crowd feverish, but it still emerges spontaneously when Cork gets the upper hand in games. 

Its stately rhythm and archaic phrases were appropriate to the circumstances in the church, though, and the last echo of the song was still in the air as Teddy’s teammates stepped out into the churchyard, readying themselves for the trip to Rathcooney with a friend who had not reached 58.

Time can be a hard commodity to manage when you invest so much of yourself in a team, and in a jersey, and a player. 

Standing in the churchyard it hit home that it isn’t that long ago, really, they were all still playing, but a morning eventually dawns when you wake up and realise it was 30 years ago you were roaring for them. 

And it was 30 years ago they were listening to the white noise of a full stadium.

When John F Kennedy’s remains were flown back to Washington from Dallas in 1963, the plane was met by a crowd of officials and politicians. 

The sight of the coffin being lowered from the plane brought the hard fact of the president’s death home to those in attendance, finally and irreversibly.

“We’ll never laugh again,” said one distraught official.

“We’ll laugh again,” said another. 

“But we’ll never be young again.”

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