The boy done fine. Okay, not so much a boy, more Big Young Paddy, as Andy Farrell might be inclined to call him. The Irish head coach wasted little time in bringing Joe McCarthy into the Irish set-up and he’s now fast-tracked younger brother Paddy into Test rugby.
The younger McCarthy was afforded his Test debut for the last 12 or 13 minutes of Ireland’s meeting with New Zealand in Soldier Field after starting just three of his 10 matches for Leinster – all of them this season and all of them in the URC.
The 22-year-old’s energy and enthusiasm was palpable as he was first to support James Lowe in chasing Sam Prendergast’s restart, staying in the tackle and helping force a knock-on from the All Blacks’ outside centre Quinn Tupaea.
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The young loosehead backed that up with a big shunt on his side of the ensuing scrum and, though penalised at the next one, it seemed a little questionable.
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The tendency is always to afford a young debutant some latitude, but the young tyro really couldn’t have done much more and it’s clear that his coaches and team-mates think his potential is huge.
“Faz just said to be myself,” revealed McCarthy afterwards. “It was a pretty simple message: make my tackles, do my bits well around scrum and stuff like that. I tried to deliver on that. Maybe we were unlucky with a few scrum calls or whatever. But no, I was just delighted to make my debut.”
Although a prodigious Ireland Under-20 and Dublin University talent, inevitably this was another step up.
“The contacts definitely were bigger. If you went into a breakdown, there’s All Black bodies just flying in and in to you. Definitely a step up in physicality. You could feel it in the lungs as well. But it was great. I enjoyed it thoroughly.”
McCarthy had been presented with his jersey the previous Thursday.
“Faz let the families come in and they stayed in for dinner with me. It was my parents and my brother Andrew. They were so happy for me and I was delighted as well.
“They played a video of some of my clips from different games and things like that and old memories. It was really nice. My good friend Gus McCarthy from school presented me with the jersey.
“Gus said a few words. It was meant to be with Joe but he couldn’t make it. So they put Joe on FaceTime. It was kind of funny. Obviously he didn’t make it. He was in the airport in Chicago. He was an hour away. It was nice. He got to see the presentation on FaceTime. It was really special.”
Asked if his family had been emotional, McCarthy said: “They were just delighted for me. I thought I’d get capped sooner and then I had to be patient. Obviously, I’m still very young getting capped anyway.
“I’ve had to work hard the last couple of years. There’s ups and downs, different injuries and things like that.”
McCarthy and his older brother Joe are now the 58th set of brothers to play for Ireland; when he spoke to his brother on the telephone, “he was pretty positive. He was just like: ‘You’ll do great.’ Sometimes you get little doubts in your head, but he just reassured me and said: ‘You’ll do great and be yourself.’”
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The McCarthy brothers will surely play on the same Irish side many times in the future, but that day might have to wait another little while yet.
“He’s hoping to get back as soon as possible. I think he’s back running now. He’s going well. His rehab is going to plan. He picked up another injury after the Lions.
“He thought he was going to be back, but then he had another thing [injury]. He’s coming back from that now.”
