Rory McCarthy remembers the O’Connor boys from the summer camps.
That’s because he remembers them taking lumps out of one another. There was Jack and Rory and Joe and Barry and the list goes on and if there was one thing they all had in common it was that they never held back. There’d be cuts and belts and bruises and whatever else you wanted but you could say that it runs in the family.
George – who’s Barry’s father – is literally known for having a pair of hands like an articulated lorry sat on them.
Barry plays AFL for the Sydney Swans and his cousins Sarah, Ciara and Aoife all played for Wexford in their Division Two camogie final win over Antrim last weekend. There are loads of O’Connors in it but with Galway coming to town and with the smell of Leinster championship in the air, it’s on a weekend like this one when Rory becomes the main man.
McCarthy is a St Martin’s club-mate and as a coach at those summer camps, as a man who’s watched him all the way up, if there’s one thing he remembers about Rory it’s that, even though he was the youngest, he always gave the boys as good as he got.
“It’s funny,” McCarthy says.
“I remember Rory very distinctly playing at the summer camps. Back then, there was that bit of cut and divilment in Rory when he was ten/eleven years of age.”
Rory McCarthy won an All-Ireland with Wexford in 1996, and was one of the county’s top hurlers from the late 90s, well into the 2000s.“Listen, he’s an O’Connor. You’d expect him to go on and hurl but little did I think, back then, that he’d go onto become one of the top hurlers in the country. But that’s what he is now. Rory is certainly Wexford’s main man.”
He picks up the story just now.
“Even up through underage he was unstoppable. Playing with St Peter’s College he was unstoppable. I remember under-21 county finals he played in and again, the man was just unstoppable. I don’t know how some poor divil would go out in a club match thinking they’re going to stop him from hurling because he’s just so difficult to mark.”
There’s a quiet confidence about him, McCarthy says, that makes him one of the best the county has ever had.
“If I was talented as that man too, I wouldn’t be worried about things either. But he’s relaxed, he has the temperament, he has everything.
“Rory is certainly Wexford’s main man. He’s something different really. He’s something we haven’t seen in the county since I don’t know when. I don’t ever remember seeing a forward like him anyway.
“I saw Martin Storey at his best and Martin would chip in with two, three or four points every day he went out but Rory O’Connor has unbelievable potential to score goals as well. To me he’s nearly unstoppable when he gets the ball in his hand because he just wants to take his man on. And he’s able to stroke it over then from 50/60/70 yards on the run, off left and right.”
That’s what he did right throughout the League campaign just gone. Waterford put the shackles on him in a semi-final that all of Wexford would rather forget but, ahead of a huge Saturday in Wexford, ahead of a big championship for this team, McCarthy is expecting a big performance from Wexford and a big performance from their main man.
“Hopefully he has matured enough in the last couple of years to accept the hardship he’s going to get, and he will get plenty of it. And that’s probably the only flaw you would have seen in Rory in his younger days but I think that’s gone now. He takes the hardship, the punishment and he’s just walking away from it.”
That’s one thing he’d have learned at the summer camps. His older brother Jack taught him a thing or two back then and, for the life of him, McCarthy can’t understand why, number one, Jack isn’t a permanent fixture on the Wexford team and number two, why he’s not playing in the backs.
Maybe they’re inter-linked.
“I absolutely 100% think Wexford need Jack. When I was over the Martin’s under-21 team I used to play Jack centre back where he had that physicality, strength and everything else. Jack O’Connor would score as much from wing back as he would wing forward and I think Wexford need that physical presence in the half back line.
“They’ve been trying to make a forward out of him and that’s not easy, for a fella who’s better facing the ball and you know, he’s on and off the team and that’s affected his confidence a bit the last few years because he hasn’t been settled at all. Left half back, that’s where I’d be playing him.”
Whether it’s half back or half forward, McCarthy would be playing him either way because if Wexford are to beat Galway, the two O’Connor boys will have to be in the middle of it.
“I know Galway will be favourites, but I would be very hopeful that Wexford will beat Galway.”
“It’ll be a nightmare getting into it. The crowd will be enormous. There’ll be a massive Wexford crowd going into it but that’s a good sign and if the weather’s good it should be a great day out. It’s good to have the championship back.”
