Charlie hoping to make an ‘impact’

DEJA-VU. That would maybe sum up Charlie Carter’s feelings this week as he prepares for another All-Ireland senior final.

To say that ace forward Carter has been though it all before would be understatement akin to saying that he's a handy forward. He's so much more than handy. I once (though bless him, he doesn't remember) marked him in a club challenge match about six years ago. And I held him.

He only scored 2-2 in the first half! Before he was moved off me! And in came DJ Carey, so it was from star to a superstar, I suppose.

But even though both of them were miles too good for a Joe Bloggs hurler like me, I found Carter even more of a handful, the speed he was moving at.

That's what I'll remember most and the sight of his heels and the depressing feeling that he could do even more if the match was more important.

Blast him! Ah well, back to the present and strange to report that Charlie will be sweating this week to see if he's on the Kilkenny team for Sunday's big game. He won't be the only one either. "I don't know when they'll announce the team, maybe Wednesday or Thursday, but there'll be a few of us, maybe more than a few, sweating hoping to get the nod not at all sure if it will come. Hoping against hope."

Looking at it as an outsider, Martin Comerford seems to be a shoe in and of course, Carey in the corner Eddie Brennan might be under a bit of pressure, having had an ordinary day out last time and been withdrawn. That's the corner that Charlie plays in too. But he's too much of a man to mention Brennan's name or if this thought has crossed his mind.

Ironic that if DJ hadn't made his late late comeback a few weeks ago, then Charlie would be more or less guaranteed his starting place for the final. This year though, even as all the media and indeed the player himself were writing off his chances of coming back, Carter his team-mate at Gowran was in no doubt.

" I knew he'd come back. He was hurling fierce well with Gowran very sharp. And you could see that he had a great hunger. The appendix set him back a few weeks, but in the end it was natural for him to come back and you saw how well he played when he did come back."

If anyone would know DJ it would have to be Carter. They were classmates together in Gowran and classmates again in St Kieran's in classes that also included Pat O'Neill. I'd say they had a fairly handy Under-12 team!

Having spent all that underage hurling together, of course he would read DJ better than perhaps anyone else, maybe even better than DJ himself. He would see the signs in training or in a word or gesture. But just now he's having to concentrate on his own game and hoping to win that starting berth.

"Brian (Cody) set our his stall from early on in the year. Like Cyril Lyons in Clare he brought in a good few young lads and he said that while they were playing well in the league that the jerseys were theirs until someone else won it off them. We won the league and that team did very well. There were times when some of us, including myself, would have been happier to be on the team of course, but that's sport isn't it? You have to fight for things in sport."

Sitting with him now, one can't fail to notice that he's looking as fit as he's ever been; you sense that he's been fighting, fighting hard to impress in training, in matches. As fit now as he's ever been in the seven All-Ireland senior finals that he has over the years prepared for. Not a regular in the first fifteen he was nevertheless there in the early Nineties when the county lost the first title in '91 and then won two in the succeeding years. Another three finals in a row in the late Nineties when he was very much a regular and reversed that trend, losing twice and winning one.

And now this one the seventh.Will he see an eighth? "If you told me eleven years ago that I'd see seven I'd have said you were a right old eejit to even think it. I can't believe it's seven. But we'll see. I'm 31 now a wife and two kids who don't see me much these times. And I have a new job in the city ( Like a lot of young men, he has given up farming and says that he will never return to it). I'll see how the club are going and we'll see."

This year, we've seen Charlie come on and make a big impression as a sub in several big games. And he knows that he is in danger of being marked down as that most essential of GAA animals "the impact sub" the guy that's almost guaranteed to do something in a big game, probably more than the player he's replacing.