PM O'Sullivan meets Justin McCarthy: The Cork hurler who was every boy’s hero

There exists a default description of Justin McCarthy as a dour, aloof man. My experience ends up the exact opposite. I think he was a man before his time, sure of his ability and strikingly handsome

Justin McCarthy at his home in Rochestown, Cork. Picture Dan Linehan

Justin McCarthy is talking about photography. His sitting room fascinates, one in which career memorabilia are arranged in low key but arresting fashion. There hangs a framed Cork jersey, number 8. There stand mementoes from teams with whom he worked, plaques from Ballygarvan and Ballymartle and Shamrocks of Ringaskiddy, photos of jubilant Cashel King Cormacs players. There is a painting of Whitepark Bay in North Antrim, gifted to him in thanks for his time with that county’s hurlers.

Yet I am struck equally by a couple of landscape photographs on the wall. McCarthy made himself a highly accomplished lensman. One shows round bales under a flurry of clouds that seem no more than a few yards above the shorn field. “Taken two fields back from the house here,” he notes. “When I shot it, I felt I could have reached out and pulled the clouds down onto the ground. They were woolly. Five minutes later, they had gone back up in the sky.”