Joe McCarthy in business mode ahead of season bow for Leinster

Cardiff will revisit a revamped RDS this weekend. 

Joe McCarthy during a Leinster Rugby captain's run at Ellis Park. Pic: Shaun Roy/Sportsfile

No shortage of talking points after Leinster’s first two weeks of the season.

Leo Cullen’s men returned winless from South Africa but with three points mined from games away to the Lions and Sharks and with a host of young players impressing in both Johannesburg and Durban.

But it wasn’t all about the newbies. Sam Prendergast only played 31 minutes of that second game but the out-half caught the eye with some sublime contributions and a mullet that may well be the most impressive in the team’s dressing-room.

“I like it,” said Joe McCarthy. “It's furry, isn't it? He looks like a badger, or like a beaver or something! I can't really talk with haircuts. I can't really say lads have bad haircuts because I've had some dodgy ones.” 

McCarthy’s own mullet has been tamed in the off-season. It’s still business at the front, party at the back, but it might be reflective of a man now 25 years of age who is segueing out of the young buck role and into the guise of senior leader.

"It was just looking a bit raggedy, wasn't it? It had maybe run its course a bit. But once you cut it then you kind of miss it a bit. I miss the feeling of it whipping around.

"So I don't know, I just cut it just to change it and maybe tidy up my appearance, make me look more serious. Getting older! I have to leave that behind me. But I think Sammy's hair actually looks alright.” 

McCarthy was among the cohort of Ireland internationals Cullen brought to South Africa for that season-opening tour and most of whom, like the second row, didn’t play but contributed in other ways off the park.

The Ireland collective prepped their younger and less experienced counterparts for both games, got in a tonne of prep work – a lot of it at altitude – and got to hang out as a group and, ahem, let the haor down a little.

A win, or two, would have been nice but they still came home in much better fettle as a group than the squad that was on the end of two solid beatings south of the equator this time last year.

McCarthy has no qualms getting up and presenting in front of the group and putting clips of opposing players and moves together during the week. That said, it does feel a bit surreal that he is now in the role of teacher and not student.

“It's so weird, yeah. We came back a bit earlier, we trained this Monday, I think the rest of the guys were flying in [on Monday], so they weren't training and we were training with all the sub-academy lads.

“It's a bit weird because they probably look at me like I'm quite an old player or something. They're all like 18, 19, coming in, so I'm like, 'geez, it feels like it was yesterday when I was coming out of school'.” 

There’s a sense of readiness about him as he looks ahead to a season debut against Cardiff at the Laya Arena this weekend.

Losing the last game of last season, against New Zealand with Ireland, left a sour taste and added to the motivation in a pre-season that, he admits, had him thinking about what he needs to be doing to be at the level of the Springboks and All Blacks.

“You might be in small groups or small drills but you're thinking, 'am I at that standard of those best teams in the world?'” 

The World Cup doesn’t start, technically, until next season but there won’t be any avoiding it as the provinces and Andy Farrell’s weave their way through the next nine or ten months and Australia looms ever larger on the horizon.

"Yeah, it definitely will be,” said McCarthy. “We have a lot of big games coming up now. We've got Cardiff this weekend, Clermont and Munster and then we're into the internationals, so it is in the back of your mind.

“This pre-season you're thinking, 'I want to be a real good nick for this season', and it sets you up well to perform well. I'll be hitting good form, hopefully, come the World Cup. But it's a long time away. There's a lot for us to do.”