Why use two words when you could use one
1 Like
Pantomime Villain is a lovely turn of phrase.
Comerford is very well liked in Ballymun. I can’t be sure if that’s in his favour or not
Can someone post this up please?
I’ve just read the intro and am already welling up here.
1 Like
Spellbound as the gigantic-hearted James McCarthy again unveiled a spirit incapable of wilting, Alex Ferguson’s breathless Turin eulogy to Roy Keane came rolling across the years.
McCarthy, an elemental and compelling presence shaking a clenched fist at the notion of surrender, delivered as titanic a Croke Park exhibition of will as Keane had on that Italian Champions League night in 1999, the one that moved his flinty old Glaswegian patron to the brink of tears.
Remember the flood of professional respect that seeped from the Manchester United capo as he recalled his captain’s competitive passion, the surge of iron-hearted vigour that did for Juventus.
“I did not think I could have a higher opinion of any footballer than I already had of the Irishman, but he rose even further in my estimation at the Stadio Delle Alpi,” Ferguson wrote.
“It was the most emphatic display of selflessness I have seen on a football field. Pounding over every blade of grass, competing as if he would rather die of exhaustion than lose, he inspired all around him. I felt it was an honour to be associated with such a player.”
Ferguson’s hymn of praise could have filled the Hill 16 skies on Sunday as McCarthy delivered 81 minutes in defeat that felt as stirring as anything even this storied coliseum has known down the decades.
In 35 years on press-box duty, your columnist cannot remember being more emotionally touched by the efforts of one man to fight through the storm.
It is a word whose value has been lost in overuse, but McCarthy was authentically heroic, a truth colleague Colm Keys recognised in elevating him above Sean O’Shea or the Clifford brothers when awarding Man of the Match.
A 32-year-old on one leg, playing his first game in a month against star-spangled opponents arriving at the midsummer of their story, put a declining, Con-less Dublin on his shoulders and – but for O’Shea’s immortal final incision – might have carried his Sky Blues to a victory that would have shattered Kerry into a million pieces.
The guy is a monster of substance, incorruptible in his will to deliver every last ember of his fire, finding the very best of himself when his team’s need is at its most fierce.
A lion increasingly recognised in his home county as The GOAT.
In mad-dog sun, there was an extraordinary 55th minute triple-tackle, not merely absorbing the runaway-train full-on impact of a charging Kerry body, but surging back not once, but twice, to make vital, game-saving interventions.
It was a spine-tingling exhibition of commitment, one that would have had McCarthy’s ardent disciple, the Blue Panther himself, Anton O’Toole, looking down from his resting place on Olympus and trembling with pride.
Minutes later James surged forward to laser a gorgeous point from under the Hogan Stand and Croke Park erupted like a volcano that could no longer hold in its payload of excitement.
Or its admiration for a once-in-ten-lifetimes kind of leader.
All around him, younger players were falling, besieged by cramp, exhaustion, heatstroke. James kept going, deaf to the sovereignty of the passing years, digging deepest when it mattered most, unbreakable in his inhuman desire.
Dublin’s greatest ever footballer, faithful to the end to his unshakeable core beliefs.
McCarthy reached down and located a spirit that had a visceral impact on his audience, a rallying of the blood that had many shaking heads in wonder.
Even in a crushing loss, he staked out new terrain, a warrior announcing himself as irreplaceable in the qualities for which, over more than a decade, he has flown the flag.
The physical engagement, the rage to compete, the depth of his combative integrity was as breathtaking as it was beautiful.
They pulled down seven towers in Ballymun. An eighth continues to stand sentinel over Anna Livia, the guardian of the city’s football conscience.
Kerry magnificently rose up above their doubts and courtesy of O’Shea’s nerveless and glorious killshot slayed their own demons.
They may be about to tighten the fist around summer as they have done so often in the past.
McCarthy looked broken at the final whistle, even his capacity to go to the limits and beyond not enough to save his team.
He will be 33 when Sky Blues next uniform up, his commitments outside football are growing, and there is a kind of terror in the city that he might step aside.
If this was a last act, it was as compelling as any conceived by another celebrated son of the city, Sean O’Casey.
O’Casey once had his character Ayamonn say of his mother: “When it was dark, you always carried the sun in your hand for me.”
Over a career, when he did so much to shape Dublin’s dominance, when this eight-time All-Ireland winner’s most basic instinct was to do whatever was required, McCarthy carried the sun in his hand for a city.
It would be easy to serenade him into the pantheon with an evident truth proclaiming him as a giant of Dublin footballer, but then it could equally be said that the word “footballer” is superfluous.
He is a giant of his home town, period.
As he illustrated again last Sunday when fearlessly taking the fight to a Kerry team on the cusp of something enormous, when filling the place he calls home with a sense of the best of itself, James McCarthy is a prince of the city.
The very best of Dublin, a place he has animated year after year with those endless and immense transfusions of gladiator spirit.
And the custodian of a spirit that last Sunday carried so many to that same wonder of the soul Alex Ferguson found on a night of beguiling Turin theatre.
4 Likes
Jesus that’s amazing writing.
They pulled down seven towers in Ballymun. An eighth continues to stand sentinel over Anna Livia, the guardian of the city’s football conscience
8 Likes
James saw seven towers. Seanie O’Shea only saw one way out.
1 Like
What a needy cunt
2 Likes
Who wrote that tripe? 
1 Like
The fact that Curtis was likely severely hungover when penning that makes it even more incredible.
He’s some poet.
5 Likes
Roy Curtis
I thought McCarthy was poor enough overall the last day. He scored a great point and let a roar out of him but sure so did tom Sullivan. Class player over the years though.
1 Like
What a gimp
2 Likes
8 All Ireland medals is some going to still give a fuck
Im on about Roy. Not McCarthy.
He’s either a genius or the Barry Egan of sports journalism. Maybe both
Roy is Dublin.
3 Likes
You’re crying. I am also crying. We are all crying.
1 Like
Roy and James are the two greatest men the old city has ever produced.
Was it definitely over I wonder? I was 80% sure it was but it started to curl off at the very end. Would have been interesting to see what a functioning Hawkeye would have concluded. I was chatting to James McCarthy in the Palace nightclub in Dublin one time, seemed a sound enough sort.