McCarthy works up an appetite for action

Injury rarely pays a visit without bringing a friend or two.

Pain is the most obvious partner but then there is boredom and the mental anguish that comes with watching the world go on turning while you stand still. Topping it all off is the physiological downside.

‘Camp belly’ is the term the Irish players have coined for those injured guys stuck to the sidelines for spells during the Six Nations but whose prodigious eating has carried on regardless of such an inconvenient state of affairs.