Late bloomer Joe McCarthy revelling in 'surreal' World Cup call-up

TAKING IT ALL IN: Joe McCarthy during an Ireland press conference in Tours, France. Pic: INPHO/Dan Sheridan

Surreal and seriously cool. That is how Joe McCarthy described being a member of Ireland’s Rugby World Cup squad and realising a lifelong dream at the tender age of 22.

When seven of his team-mates currently in camp in the Loire Valley were playing at the 2015 World Cup in an Ireland squad captained by their present forwards coach Paul O’Connell, McCarthy was watching from afar with schoolmates and planning lives watching the 2019 edition from a student union bar with thoughts of representing Ireland a distant, optimistic ambition.

That is understandable for McCarthy was a late rugby developer, plugging away in the Blackrock thirds. Which should put the lock’s presence, with just 19 Leinster appearances to his name, as the youngest member of Andy Farrell’s 33-man squad preparing for Saturday’s Pool B opener against Romania into some kind of perspective. He is in a position he did not think would be possible.

“Probably not really, to be honest, at all,” McCarthy said on Monday. “I remember the 2015 World Cup, I was talking to my friends saying ‘Jeez, we will be in college for the next World Cup’.

“And to think that I would be in the next one is still quite amazing. I would never have thought I would be able to represent Ireland at a World Cup so it’s seriously cool.

“I actually haven’t gone to a World Cup game but obviously watched a lot of them growing up. I suppose you look at teams like the All Blacks I would have grown up watching, looking at them at World Cups, see how dominant they were especially.

“They would kind of be my memories, just the excitement. I remember talking to my mates during the 2015 World Cup, all watching it together back in school. It’s surreal to be here now.” 

Still a student at Trinity, in the final half of his fourth year of his Global Business degree, the baby of the squad is not immune to some ribbing from older provincial team-mates.

“A few of the lads have been giving me a bit of slagging that I’ve more Munster in me. Yeah, both parents are Munster. My Dad is from west Cork, Castletownbere, and my mum is Tipperary, Cashel.

“I’ve been there loads. We loved going down to west Cork especially, we used to spend the summer there, my Dad and brother were down there, we used to spend the whole month of August down there when we were younger. And go to Cashel a good bit as well.” 

Now it is the McCarthy clan, including younger brother and Ireland Under-20 prop Paddy, following Joe to France.

“They plan to come over if I’m selected, they’ll come over on Saturday. So they come to all the matches. They’ll definitely come if I’m playing,” he said.

Rugby has always been a big deal to the McCarthy boys as the lock explained.

“We’d always be wrestling a good bit, me and Paddy. Rugby is huge, my other brother Andrew plays tag rugby with a special needs team (Seapoint Dragons).

“My younger brother…it’s always what we’ve done pretty much for our whole lives. Usually you get nervous for a game and my brother would be, this is all you do for the last 15 years of your life, all we were doing was rugby, so he sort of calms me down.

“It all started in Stradbrook, playing all the age grades up, me and my brother especially, we’d watch rugby together, watch games on TV, Super Rugby in the mornings, watch the internationals if the All Blacks play in the mornings on Saturdays. All that, it’s been a huge part of our lives.”