{"id":117371,"date":"2025-11-04T12:26:22","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T12:26:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/117371\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T12:26:22","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T12:26:22","slug":"paddy-mccarthy-on-his-ireland-test-debut-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/117371\/","title":{"rendered":"Paddy McCarthy on his Ireland Test debut \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The boy done fine. Okay, not so much a boy, more Big Young Paddy, as Andy Farrell<\/a> might be inclined to call him. The Irish head coach wasted little time in bringing Joe McCarthy into the Irish set-up and he\u2019s now fast-tracked younger brother Paddy into Test rugby.<\/p>\n

The younger McCarthy was afforded his Test debut for the last 12 or 13 minutes of Ireland\u2019s meeting with New Zealand in Soldier Field after starting just three of his 10 matches for Leinster \u2013 all of them this season and all of them in the URC<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 22-year-old\u2019s energy and enthusiasm was palpable as he was first to support James Lowe in chasing Sam Prendergast\u2019s restart, staying in the tackle and helping force a knock-on from the All Blacks<\/a>\u2019 outside centre Quinn Tupaea.<\/p>\n

\"\"Are Ireland sliding down rugby’s global pecking order?<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The tendency is always to afford a young debutant some latitude, but the young tyro really couldn\u2019t have done much more and it\u2019s clear that his coaches and team-mates think his potential is huge.<\/p>\n

\u201cFaz just said to be myself,\u201d revealed McCarthy afterwards. \u201cIt 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although a prodigious Ireland Under-20 and Dublin University talent, inevitably this was another step up.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe contacts definitely were bigger. If you went into a breakdown, there\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

McCarthy had been presented with his jersey the previous Thursday.<\/p>\n

\"Ireland'sIreland’s R\u00f3nan Kelleher, Paddy McCarthy, Tommy O’Brien and Craig Casey face the New Zealand Haka at Soldier Field, Chicago. Photograph: Dan Sheridan\/Inpho <\/p>\n

\u201cFaz 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. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey 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. <\/p>\n

\u201cGus said a few words. It was meant to be with Joe but he couldn\u2019t make it. So they put Joe on FaceTime. It was kind of funny. Obviously he didn\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked if his family had been emotional, McCarthy said: \u201cThey were just delighted for me. I thought I\u2019d get capped sooner and then I had to be patient. Obviously, I\u2019m still very young getting capped anyway.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had to work hard the last couple of years. There\u2019s ups and downs, different injuries and things like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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, \u201che was pretty positive. He was just like: \u2018You\u2019ll do great.\u2019 Sometimes you get little doubts in your head, but he just reassured me and said: \u2018You\u2019ll do great and be yourself.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Five things we learned from Ireland\u2019s 26-13 defeat to New ZealandOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s hoping to get back as soon as possible. I think he\u2019s back running now. He\u2019s going well. His rehab is going to plan. He picked up another injury after the Lions.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe thought he was going to be back, but then he had another thing [injury]. He\u2019s coming back from that now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The boy done fine. Okay, not so much a boy, more Big Young Paddy, as Andy Farrell might…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[789,75358,75357,83244,111,139,69,83243,213],"class_list":["post-117371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-all-blacks","tag-andy-farrell","tag-ireland-rugby","tag-joe-mccarthy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-paddy-mccarthy","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}