Joe McCarthy: 'Every week in the Six Nations is massive but some games feel extra special'

BIG JOE: Joe McCarthy has made quite the imppression since he first lined out for Ireland. Pic: ©INPHO/Ben Brady

Things that have, against all the odds, survived rugby’s shift from amateurism to professionalism: the British and Irish Lions, the old-school blazer … and the sort of mullet that ought to be outlawed everywhere outside of Texas.

Go back through the archives and it’s the southern hemisphere carrying the can for the worst offenders – and still does - but the trend seemed to go global at the last World Cup in France with all sorts of offenders from all manner of nations on view.

Ireland have been as guilty as most. Mack Hansen, Andrew Porter and captain Caelan Doris have all committed their crimes against good taste but none of them caught the eye quite like Joe McCarthy’s in Marseille when Ireland started last year’s Six Nations.

“The prank haircut? Yeah, Hugo Keenan’s mate did my hair cut. He did a few dodgy hair cuts that day. He’s usually quite good but he had a bit of an off-day. Yeah, he’s an accountant by trade, definitely not a hairdresser by trade.

“I kinda liked it though, it’s memorable that haircut.” His performance, too.

This was the night that the name Joe McCarthy was sidelined and ‘Big Joe’ was born. Peter O’Mahony described his display as “outstanding”. Dan Sheehan lauded his “pure energy” and the plaudits kept coming.

Andrew Trimble spoke about his aggression and “raw thuggery” on Virgin TV. Brian O’Driscoll was just as taken and made the point that McCarthy’s locks had upped the stakes to a rare level on what was his Championship debut.

“Speaking from experience, when you have a barnet like that you have to play well and my god did that boy play well,” O’Driscoll smiled on ITV. He was the only logical choice for a man of the match award that was promptly handed over to his brother Andrew in the stands.

MAC ATTACK: Ireland’s Joe McCarthy gives his Guinness Player of the Match medal to his brother Andrew alongside his father Joe and mother Paula. Pic: Dan Sheridan, Inpho

It’s easy to forget just how big his impact was that weekend. The performance, the hair, it all added up to one of those stories that breaks the banks of a rugby or even a sporting audience but he had caught the eye in a big way before.

The story goes that the Ireland squad was gathered around a TV in their warm-weather training camp in Portugal in January of 2022 when McCarthy made his senior Leinster debut away to Cardiff in the URC and Andy Farrell asked who the big lad was.

“We lost that game, my first cap, so hopefully he wasn’t looking too in-depth into that. My first interaction with Andy? We had a week off from Leinster after a bloc of games and Faz called me saying: ‘I hear you’re going away, we’d love to have you incamp’.

“I said, ‘oh no, Faz, I’m good to come in’. I cancelled my plans to go away and went in at the end of the Six Nations. I was a bit nervous on the phone call but it was good. I was actually going to Barcelona to meet a friend who was living there.” 

He was still only 19 then and he recently became the youngest player to sign a central contract with the IRFU when taking up the offer of a three-year deal. Add in the fact that he starts against France again this time and it shows how highly-rated he remains.

It hasn’t been a seamless rise. Like Ireland in general, McCarthy couldn’t come close to the heights of the Stade Velodrome through the remainder of the 2024 Championship, even if the team finished it with a second straight title.

And his latest Six Nations didn’t get going until the round three defeat of Wales in Cardiff after a training ground accident in Portugal pre-tournament when Finlay Bealham knocked into Gus McCarthy and Gus McCarthy knocked into him.

It left him with a broken nose, a head injury and a face only a mother could love.

“I didn’t look great the next few days! It kinda looked like I’d been stung by a bee. It didn’t really look that cool. I’d a bit of a black eye. Didn’t look too cool. I went into The Shelbourne the day after and fans were like, ‘Can I get a photo with you?’

“And then they looked at me and it was, ‘Oh Jeez, maybe we’ll leave it for today.’ I was like, ‘Okay, cheers bud’ but, no, it was all good. I wasn’t too bad. Missed the first two Six Nations games, though. It was frustrating but that does happen in rugby a lot.” 

McCarthy will be in the thick of it today. That physicality and aggression will be needed more than ever against a French side bursting with power. It is, he admits, the kind of prospect that sharpens the focus that bit more and gets the juices flowing.

This is as big as it gets. The biggest since the World Cup.

“Every week in the Six Nations is massive but some games feel extra special. France, how well they’ve been going, how strong a side they are: there’s that extra bit of big game feel about this but we’ve prepared how we usually would.”