Liam Cahill declares Darragh McCarthy ‘arrived on the scene' after Tipperary GAA starlet's All-Ireland final masterclass
The 19-year-old Toomevara thunderbolt capped a dream debut senior season by
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Liam Cahill hailed Darragh McCarthy
Credit: Ray McManus/Sportsfile
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Darragh McCarthy scored 1-13 in the All-Ireland final
Credit: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile
The Premier have a reputation for producing young stars and won All-Ireland minor crowns in 2022 and 2024 before
Still, his temperament was questioned this season when his boss gave him his shot on the big stage.
He was
But Cahill kept faith in his star talent and that was rewarded as he fired Tipp to their first Liam MacCarthy since 2019 thanks to a
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The manager said: 'That's the class of the man. We produce legendary players like Jason Forde and Eoin Kelly and Séamie Callanan and all these.
'And some of them can't be hanging around forever and you'll say, 'Where are you going to find the next one?'
'Suddenly, up pops McCarthy, 19 years of age — he's now arrived on the scene. From a serious club in Toomevara. Those fellas up there would eat you alive.
'So, there was never going to be a case of Darragh's character being questioned or him doubting himself.
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'That's the class of this young man and the resilience he has. And he just loves his hurling. And when you love hurling like that, you get your rewards. And he got his just reward today and I'm really, really happy for him.'
Tipp had their resilience questioned 14 months ago when they bowed out of the Championship without winning a game. Finishing bottom of the Munster SHC was a sickener for their management and players.
Liam Cahill speaks to RTE after Tipperary GAA win All-Ireland final
But then came a stunning rise from the ashes. Cahill revealed they had to go back to basics and earn the trust of the Tipp public all over again. And his players did just that to storm to their 29th crown.
The Premier won SIX Championship games in a row to go all the way, stunning the hot-favourite Rebels who only managed TWO POINTS in the entire second half.
On their recovery, Cahill explained: 'It was about bringing back a bit of identity to our play — 2024, we just didn't contest for the jersey the way we should have.
'I'm not going to go there after today because for me it's in the past now. We started at a very low base, all of us, management, the whole support team, players.
'And we just started to go game by game, bit by bit and suddenly these younger players really started to integrate into the more seasoned players.
'Suddenly you had serious options and then the momentum of our Under-20s winning the All-Ireland, it starts to take off.
'I'm just very, very fortunate to be from Tipperary and to have the talented group of players that were there.
'OK, they're a little bit off of maybe their maturity and we did always say that was a three-year-plus plan.
'But these players, when they get belief and confidence in them, they mushroom into really good players.
'Again, it's just testament to the ruthless mindset of the players as they gathered momentum.'
REBELS WITH A CAUSE
And as his players partied in the dressing room, Cahill was already thinking of next season. Cork, on the other hand, their long and painful wait for glory goes on. The Rebels were everyone's front runners to prevail and were on course to end their 20-year famine when Shane Barrett's goal put them six ahead at half-time.
But it all fell apart for them after the restart when John McGrath netted twice either side of McCarthy's penalty, which saw Cork go down to 14 when Eoin Downey collected a second yellow.
Cahill felt for counterpart Pat Ryan given the pressure to deliver and knows the Rebels will be back.
The Tipp chief said: 'We've arrived now. It's easy to be the hunter going after teams and now it's going to turn to us into being the hunted — so it's going to see a different side to management, our prep and our mindset going into next year.
'To be fair to Cork, all week, I can only imagine what it has been like for Pat and his management team and everybody to try and manage that expectation. It's huge.
'Cork have been superb all year, league champions, Munster champions, bringing massive crowds back to the stands.
'As I said to Pat after, I wish it was anybody bar him that I was shaking hands with today because he's put so much into it. He's after having a difficult year as well, personally. But I know that Cork team will be back and I know that Cork will have their day in the sun soon.
'We're just proud that it wasn't today and that Tipp thankfully got over the line. We never had it won. Looking at the watch, 55, 60 minutes, 'Would it just get to 70 minutes, please, as soon as possible'.
'But anyway, we're here, really proud to be associated with this group of players. Really proud to have been given the honour to bring through this crop.
'It's been a tough road but just immensely proud of everybody involved, the whole collective.
'Fortune favours the brave and our hurlers were really brave today.'
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ON A SOAKING wet day in Ballybofey, May 2011, Donegal backroom member Marc 'Maxi' Curran was sent to the minor team dressing room to fetch Paddy McBreaty. He was just after scoring 1-3 for the minors, but they were beaten in the Ulster championship by Antrim. Curran got him fresh kit and a bowl of pasta. In the next short while, McBrearty would soon join an exclusive band of players who played minor and senior county championship on the same day. It began a pattern that Jim McGuinness would embed in his Donegal teams. He has said before that the most talented minor footballer in the county would play senior football, so the best thing for them was to bring them in and nourish them early. Since then, he brought in Ryan McHugh in 2013 and even was a little hasty in trying to fast-track Finbarr Roarty last year, who nonetheless is a front runner now for Young Player of the Year. In 2014, he brought in Darrach 'Jigger' O'Connor. He started the first Ulster championship game against Derry. 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After the game, assistant manager Rory Gallagher came over for a chat. Marking his card. 'I'll never forget the phone call,' says O'Connor now. After Buncrana clubmate Paul McGonigle was added to the Donegal backroom team in late 2013, he made a call to O'Connor. He was sitting in geography class at Scoil Mhuire. His phone was lying on his pencil case and McGonigle's name flashed up. He went sheepishly to the teacher and told her he had to take the call. She just laughed. Playing against Armagh in the Dr McKenna Cup. Lorcan Doherty / INPHO Lorcan Doherty / INPHO / INPHO 'I was still 17 at that time,' he says. 'You're just delighted, like, you know, like I remember just being so excited for it.' His mind flashed back to the Ulster meeting of Donegal and Armagh in the Ulster championship of 2007. He played at half-time in the mini-games on a day the seniors scored a rare win over that generation of Armagh players. Advertisement 'Karl Lacey, like I remember just watching Lacey that day and just thinking 'Jesus Christ.' From that moment on Karl Lacey was just a complete hero of mine. 'You had Michel Murphy obviously came on the scene and Christy Toye. I remember in a school final we got beat by St Eunan's at a good game and Rory Kavanagh came up to me after, he was managing St Eunan's, and he shook my hand and I remember just thinking, 'Jesus, there's Rory Kavanagh. He plays for Donegal.' On his first training session, reality bit. 'Gruelling. I mean you weren't long realising, this is a completely different ballgame. But I just loved it. I loved every minute of it.' 'I had a lot of work to do. It was just the body adapting to be honest, really, because I didn't play county under 16, I didn't play county when I was my first year of minors, and I then was involved with the 21s and the minors at the same time. 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Playing a league game against his father's county of Roscommon. Tommy Dickson / INPHO Tommy Dickson / INPHO / INPHO 'The seniors had just trained before us, and I remember even just listening to Jim shouting at the boys that day got me excited. 'The hairs were standing up on the back of the neck because we were in the changing room and we could hear Jim driving the boys on. 'We'd done the training and a lot of ball work and we'd done a set of runs, and I thought that was, I was completely out of my feet. 'Then, they said there's two more sets of that.' He looked at team trainer Francie Friel as if to say, 'You can't be serious?' Friel looked back at him as if to say he was crazy for questioning their methods. 'And that was the day that I realised I need to get myself in shape here. This is a big step up.' With McGuinness, the tactical side of it was also something he had to catch up on. 'It's that you've so much clarity in what you're doing. 'I can guarantee you, the boys are still as fit, just now there's that much clarity of the game plan.' The championship rolled round and he was handed a start at wing-forward against Derry in Celtic Park. He had never played there before, but had clear instructions to get after their creative defender, Sean Leo McGoldrick. 'I knew what I was doing. Just to be around him. Anytime he went to go, I would go with him. 'Like there was no second thought.' He kept his place for the semi-final against Antrim and notched a brilliant goal, cutting back onto his right foot to shoot from distance, ending up with 1-2. He started the Ulster final and was taken off for McBrearty. Despite that, he again started the All-Ireland final but was replaced in the first half by Toye. 'Marc O'Sé had caused a wild bit of bother against Mayo (in the semi-final),' O'Connor outlines. 'My role was that when he's bombing forward, I have to mark him. And when he didn't run, I remember saying to myself, 'I need to do something here, I'm going to be pulled because Paddy McBrearty and Christy Toye are sitting on the bench and Jim's not going to leave me on here. 'But was on about them not really knowing you and you might get a good chance, but if Marc Ó Sé's going forward the way he was, you're marking him.' It was a game which Donegal never controlled. They had their plans, honed during multiple training camps and the weekend before they took up residence in the Lough Erne Golf Resort in Fermanagh, training at the nearby Brewster Park, home of Enniskillen Gaels. 'That's kind the disappointing aspect of the '14 final, that we didn't do what we should have done. I've never watched it. I never will,' he says. 'There was a flatness to us. It's going to haunt me to the day I die if we don't win on Sunday.' Even now, it's referenced. Eamonn McGee is now coaching Buncrana and he mentioned to O'Connor recently that he spends far more time thinking about the Kerry final of 2014, than the All-Ireland he won in 2012. At the end of the year, O'Connor had flunked school. He messed up his CAO applications form for college. He put down NUIG but he had no intention of going there. 'But again when I look back, I wasn't worried about my Leaving Cert. 'I don't know why I had Galway down number one, but I found out around August time that you have to take your number one, and if you don't, you can take a year out.' He took the year out. He wanted to go and do teaching in DCU but never quite got there. He entered education through a circuitous route and now works with children who struggle to finish school through the Department of Education. 'That was always my interest, I would have worked a lot with special needs as well, so I thought I wanted to do teaching,' he says. 'And if I had done teaching, I would have just been looking after the bad ones in classes as they say.' School for him was tricky. He had undiagnosed ADHD in school. In primary school it was disastrous. He was continually getting into trouble, but his teacher, Maria Doherty, was also the school football coach. She recognised when the issues with his behaviour arose. 'She was the first one to realise when I was grand – after lunchtime,' he says. Maria spoke to O'Connor's mother, Catherine, who was a nurse. 'And she said that he's not getting in trouble after exercise. It's only when he's sitting for a long time and he starts acting up. 'And then all of a sudden it turns out that I have ADHD and secondary school is grand then because you're moving class every 40 minutes anyway. 'I think from that point on, I always have a look at the troublemakers. You just want to help them. If I wasn't at Gaelic, would my experience have been different?' He volunteered for a long time with iCARE, a disability services and support organisation in Buncrana. Everything started making sense. Even now, certain things get to him. Sitting for long periods. Inactivity. On days when they have to facilitate internal suspensions, he takes the children outside for breaks. They need it. He needs it. Related Reads 'One of my early years, I had the match played in my head a thousand times beforehand' David Clifford 'could be the best player that has ever played the game' - McGuinness 'It's challenging but it's adding to the entertainment' - Goalkeeper view on new rules 'I'm very forgetful,' he admits. 'For a long time, I thought it was just being forgetful, but I went to a few people since, and there's certain things about that. 'Doing paperwork is hard because you have to sit and concentrate. Wouldn't be the worst anxiety, but the thought of doing it then would just really trigger me. Not being able to exercise isn't great, for example, at the minute I've been in a cast for eight weeks.' Which brings us to injuries. In 2015 he tore his MCL playing against Galway in a challenge match. He played through it with the U21s, all the way to the Ulster final against Tyrone. Celebrating the 2018 Ulster final win with Stephen McBrearty. James Crombie / INPHO James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO He was taking six weeks out but then tore it properly in a club game. Even at that, he still managed to get back to come on as a sub in the 2015 Ulster final loss to Monaghan. The following Tuesday they were training in Convoy. He did his cruciate on his other (left) knee then. It was left undiagnosed. He kept trying to come back. One night he was down at the club and they were short players. He played and this time ruined the knee altogether. 'Just dealing with injuries, people don't see the mental side of it,' he says. 'I just went from 18 years of age, would have done anything for football, to 21 nearly looking for an excuse to stop playing football.' By 2018 he was still floating around the panel under Declan Bonner, playing a few games here and there. He even made it onto the pitch for the dying moments of the Ulster final win over Fermanagh, scoring a point after coming on for Jamie Brennan. And then, another knee injury. 'The good thing that came out of Covic for me was I realised 'Jesus, I need to play football for as long as I can.' 'Important things in my life, they've been taken away from me.' A couple of months back, he injured his patella. He's in a leg brace since. The pain is severe. He believes he would take two cruciate injuries over what he has now. He doesn't look back as he doesn't have too far to look for people who suffered real tragedy. O'Connor was born in San Francisco in 1995 and three years later, he and his mother were on a plane after after his cousin, eight-year-old Oran Doherty, was killed in the Omagh Bombing. That gives him all the perspective he needs. He has his tickets secured for Sunday, though they are on the top tier. He's on the lookout for a swap for a lower perch, what with the hassle of the leg brace. Who could begrudge him that? ***** Check out the latest episode of The42′s GAA Weekly podcast here
