How Charlie McCarthy answered Cork’s call to arms

Charlie McCarthy, the latest inductee into the Munster GAA Hall of Fame, can put his medals on the table with the best of them. Though his stellar time in a Cork jersey had several false starts.

The hurling legend’s haul as an inter-county player includes seven All-Ireland, 12 Munster and four national league medals. He also captained Munster to Railway Cup glory at a time when the competition held significance. He didn’t fare too badly at club level either, winning five county, four Munster and two All-Ireland medals with St Finbarr’s.

Good times?

“Oh, I’ve fantastic memories of that period,” says McCarthy, reflecting on a senior inter-county career that spanned from 1965 to 1980.

The corner-forward rose to prominence when lining out for the Cork minors in 1962. His debut was a Munster semi-final against Clare. He’d contribute 3-3 of their 4-10 winning total. Not bad for a 16-year-old. That was the first of his three years in the full-forward line of the Cork minor team. Success, mind, wasn’t forthcoming until the summer of ’64. He’d linked up with the Cork minor footballers by this stage — corner-forward was his speciality with the big ball too — and won Munster medals in both codes in the space of eight days. An All-Ireland minor hurling medal was added to the collection, but Offaly scuppered their double bid.

“I would never have classed myself as a footballer and that minor final defeat to Offaly was the last time I played football for Cork,” McCarthy recalls.

“A lot of the Offaly lads who were playing that day, Willie Bryan, Tony McTague and others, went on to win All-Ireland medals in the early 70s. I was only 5’7. Most of the lads I was coming up against were six foot and at that time, long balls were the order of the day. I’d never have survived.”

Hurling became his focus thereafter and a decent showing against Glen Rovers in the first round of the Cork SHC in ’65 earned him a call-up to the Cork senior squad.

“It is amazing how it worked at that time when you compare it to the present day. That game against the Glen was played in the Old Athletics Grounds in early June. I played okay and was subsequently brought into the Cork panel. I trained with Cork for only three or four nights before the first championship game against Waterford. Nowadays, you get called up to the panel in October and there’s eight months of training before the first round of championship.”

McCarthy was introduced as a second-half sub in the 2-6 apiece stalemate with Waterford at the Gaelic Grounds. He started the replay and although Cork advanced to the final, the young corner-forward was withdrawn before the finish and did not feature in the 4-11 to 0-5 mauling at the hands of Tipperary.

The Barrs finished off the year as county champions and McCarthy was part of the Cork panel for the ‘65/66 league campaign. Not that he made an impression. The conclusion of the league brought to an end his involvement on the inter-county scene. He was deemed surplus to requirements.

“On the afternoon Tipperary played Limerick in the quarter-final of the Munster championship in ’66, Cork played Kilkenny in a challenge match in Nowlan Park. I got a call up for the challenge. Now, we were all expecting to get word of a Tipperary victory given they were the top team at the time but didn’t we hear that Limerick had beaten them. We were all saying that the door was now open for everyone to win Munster with Tipperary gone.”

Clare and Cork were to square off in the second of the quarter-finals a fortnight later, but McCarthy was told after the Kilkenny match that he was still out in the cold. That remained the case right up until the Saturday night before the game.

“I wasn’t at home that Saturday night. I was out with my girlfriend, now my wife. I came home and my mother, Eileen, said one of the selectors, Tony Shaughnessy, had rang. He said I was to be down on Cook Street the following morning at 10am as I’d been called up to the panel. The night before, like. It wouldn’t happen today.

“What had happened was that some of the Glen Rovers players were going to America that year on holidays and you had to get some sort of injection before you went over. A few of them got sick as a result of the injection and couldn’t line out for Cork.

“Justin McCarthy got a goal with the last puck of the game the following afternoon to level it. I started the replay, did well and we won.”

He’d finish the year with All-Ireland senior and U21 medals in the back pocket. After a couple of false starts, he was now a permanent fixture on the Cork scene.

“You’d be thinking the first senior medal would be the most special, but I have to say it was when I was captain in ’78.

“To be captain of a winning Cork team was fantastic.

“When you’re a young lad, all you ever dreamt off was playing for the Barrs and Cork. It all happened. That it did was just fantastic.”