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Kieran Shannon: Teddy McCarthy made us all fall in love with his game

For almost any other Footballer of the Year winner it would be one of the top lines of their obituary. With Teddy it was well down the bullet points of his resume

Tue, 13 Jun, 2023 - 15:34

Kieran Shannon

A week on and still the tributes are forthcoming, just as there’s still that sense of disbelief. Trying to get our heads around the fact he’s no longer with us, and trying to get our heads around all that he did when he was.

Last Sunday before the Munster hurling final, an occasion he himself featured in a half-dozen times, a packed Gaelic Grounds broke into a round of applause and paused briefly in silence to salute Teddy McCarthy. Although it was a line we’d all often heard either side of his passing, I found myself in the Clare End shaking my head and biting my lip when the voice over the tannoy baldly stated again how McCarthy is the only man in the association’s history to win a senior All-Ireland in both codes in the same year. Imagine. For a man to even play both codes in the same year. For him to even reach the final in both codes in the same year. And then for him to win both finals the same year, making the best team in the country in not just one sport but two. Christ, what a sportsman.

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