A Life Less Ordinary

In yet another year of what might have been, that was bookended by the promise of better times to come, the undoubted highlight was not on the field, but off it.

I’ve said already how striking it was to see the floods of young people teeming through the gates to watch Cork play. The meandering drift into middle age brings with it a heightened sense of place as you slowly begin to realise that there are certain things in life that you will never do again, never experience in the same way again.

There is a sense of mourning that accompanies that, but on the terraces this summer we were joined by my nieces and nephew, and being in their company for those games will live longer in the mind than anything else.

Watching them watch the games, it was hard not to think back to what it was like to fall in love with it all way back when. There was no obsession with team selections, or tactics, or refereeing. There was just the game, and you lived and died with every score, be it for or against.

Then there were the heroes that embodied everything that you were feeling. The players who gripped you like no other, and in my formative years, there was no greater hero than Teddy McCarthy. Because Teddy could do everything.

He played hurling. He played football. He scored. He tackled. He competed relentlessly. He soared, my god did he soar. He was a real-life comic book star, a man who was idolised in our house.

At this stage in life, memories of when you’re six years of age are more like a picture montage than a video, more moments than a definite narrative, but Teddy crops up everywhere.

He’s there in the first game I ever remember watching, my first trip to Limerick to watch the hurlers, my first Cork and Kerry game, my first visit to Thurles, Killarney, Croker, my first All-Ireland final, my first county final.

I wouldn’t like to know how many times I’ve watched the 1986 All-Ireland Final, but there he is making his debut on the biggest day of all, catching ball beneath the old Hogan Stand and turning in before moving it on.

I remember three things about my first Cork and Kerry game down the Páirc in ’88. Dinny Allen’s goal, nearly falling off a barrier in the City End and Teddy’s contribution to something everybody pretends they don’t want to see. As the players get to know one another, there he is, taking off his gloves before getting stuck in.

A few weeks later, there he is, again, scoring a goal in an All-Ireland final. A year later and he’s footballer of the year after winning another All-Ireland and that autumn I wanted Sars to beat the Glen in the county final for no other reason than Sars were Teddy’s team, and he was my man.

Replica jerseys were just becoming a thing in the GAA as Cork prepared for the double, and to make things even better for an obsessed young boy, Finn’s Corner printed numbers on the back of them. This in itself proved a difficult and stressful choice. I knew Teddy would more than likely be midfield, but what if he wore number eight instead of number nine? What if people didn’t know that it was him who I really, really wanted to be? The horror.

Then, to compound his immortality, he climbed the steps of the Hogan Stand twice in a fortnight. Injury had curtailed his summer, but operating on some rare hybrid of fumes and instinct in the hurling final, he managed to hit 0-3 from midfield. Then he dusted himself off and went out and won another All-Ireland, imbuing a greatness on him that would be dismissed as fanciful were it imagined.

Teddy was everybody’s hero, both young and old. Too much happens in hurling and football games for fans to have a wide array of choices when it comes to chanting. There’s the slower chant of ‘Rebels’, the inherent desire to be a Rebel, there was a time when Hill 16 was falling down and going to be built back up in red and white, occasionally the Shandon Bells went ding-aling-aling, and, when things are going really well, a rendition of the Banks might float around the stadium.

For a while, though, Teddy had his own tune: “Tic, tack Teddy Mac”. It wasn’t the most imaginative of songs the sporting world had ever heard, but it was easy, and, more importantly, Teddy Mac was Teddy Mac. His greatness spoke for itself.

From there, Teddy was just part of life, a constant in a world of flux. The famous picture that Des Barry captured of him climbing high to catch that ball against Wexford in one of the 1993 League Finals was on the wall of my bedroom long after I’d passed the appropriate age for doing such things.

Then, in 1996, he was gone. That game against Limerick at home was one we’d prefer to forget, but in my recollection of it, Cork fell apart after half time as Teddy didn’t come out for the second half because of injury. He left, perhaps fittingly, bloodied and bandaged, a warrior to the last.

The twists and turns of life mean that I’ve worked in Glanmire these past eleven years, and you would often see him around, just as you’d always see him at games, everywhere. But you never really get used to seeing your heroes, the heart still skips a beat, you can’t help but see them as they were and your inner-monologue is still screaming at you that that is, indeed, Teddy Mac.

Our thoughts do oft in fancy take flight down here in Cork. Too often, we are guilty of rowing against the current, back to times when we thought that we were Kings of all that we surveyed, and longing desperately for a return to those best of times. Yet no matter how high into the ether those flights of fancy take us, they will never soar as high as Teddy actually did, be it in the Pike, Riverstown, Thurles, Croker, Killarney or down the Páirc.

Teddy Mac. Laoch, hero, icon, legend.

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis.

John Coleman