by Diarmuid O'Flynn
Irish Examiner
Saturday October 11th 2003

John McCarthy

TO understand the success story that is Newtownshandrum, a chat with this year’s senior captain, John McCarthy, comes highly recommended. The past seven years have been remarkable. The IHC champions of 1996 were senior kingpins four years later. Tomorrow, they are finalists for the second year in succession. All from a club with a population base of 800.

McCarthy is a quiet guy who has been a part of this remarkable campaign, and whose value is most appreciated by his own supporters.

Corner-back now, full-back in his younger days, he’s one of those players other teams like to target as a potential weakness.

Yet, game after game, year after year, he does the business. Quite simply, though he would blanch at such praise, John McCarthy is one of the best man-markers around, driven by the intense and single-minded competitive spirit of this club.

A flashback to last year’s county final loss to Blackrock, this Sunday’s opposition, opens the book. “That was so bloody disappointing. The odd thing is, when you get to a final, you never see yourself losing. You are anticipating the win, take it a little bit for granted even. Then when you lose it hits a lot harder, so hard you want to go back again to win the next one, just to end on a good note.

“We saw it with Kilkenny in ’99, that’s what has been driving them on and hopefully you’ll see it with Cork now after this year. If you suffer badly enough, if it’s any consolation, you’ll come back to win, again and again.”

But of course, there is a flip side to losing. “It can have a bad psychological effect on you. At the end of the year, everyone loses except one team. Whether it’s first round or final, everyone loses except that one team.

"We’re one of the two teams still left in this competition, but if we lose on Sunday, that’s our season gone up in smoke, just like everyone else that lost this year. Just like winning can become a habit, so can losing, and that’s something we want to avoid.”

The irony is a couple of years ago, due to a combination of work pressure (full-time accountant in Cork, helping out on the family dairy farm) and diminishing confidence, John was ready to pack it in. At his lowest ebb, he was persuaded otherwise by Ben O’Connor his club team-mate and current Cork senior star.

“It was after we were beaten in the Imokilly game in 2001 and Ben said to me afterwards, you stay until someone better comes along to replace you, then you go, you’re covered. But not until there’s someone better there. That made sense.”

Now he is here, skippering the side in a county final against champions Blackrock, the victors of their bout 12 months ago. It is a huge challenge.

“They were the better side last year, but we had a terrible coach in Tom Ryan. In one way we sort of made a scapegoat out of him, got rid of him, but now it’s up to us to prove that we were right all along, because I thought he was a shocking coach.

“Revenge won’t be a factor. The only thing is, we haven’t given that display yet this year, and that’s something that dogs us, and possibly dogs Blackrock as well, inconsistency. Twenty outstanding minutes against Imokilly and that’s been it all year.

“Some people would say we played well against Ballyhea as well, but I’d contradict that. We were up six points at half-time and dominated with the wind in the second half. We got two goals in the first four minutes, and that was the game over, but for the rest of that half, for 26 minutes of dominance, we only hit 1-5.

“They weren’t good enough on the day to take advantage, but the same happened against Sars, both days, went into a lead, dropped the tempo, they reeled us back in and we were in a dog-fight.

“We can’t afford that with Blackrock, because they win those wars of attrition, they have the physical strength and experience. We’ll have to be clinical, produce a five-star display and keep the tempo high all the time.

“We feel we can hold their forward line, but they have those attritional half-backs. Cummins is a such a clean striker, Fergal Ryan is a hard nail, Wayne Sherlock who is sheer class, tidying up everything at the back.

"They have the best backs in the game by a mile, a very strong midfield as both Paul Tierney and Adrian Coughlan can score from play. They are physically strong and well balanced.

But what of his own side?

“However, I think we have the best forwards in the county. Good forwards against good backs, usually the backs win those contests, but hopefully not this Sunday.”