Ireland soccer legend on the ball with Offaly fans

FORMER Ireland soccer captain and manager Mick McCarthy described Accessible Counselling Tullamore (ACT) as an incredible organisation after visiting the charity's premises on Saturday.

McCarthy made a special appearance in the Goalpost bar as a guest of the Tullamore Republic of Ireland Supporters Club where fans donated funds to ACT.

Speaking to the Tullamore Tribune, the hero of Euro '88 and Italia '90 said he had been told the story of how ACT had been founded by the late James O'Connor and is now being carried on by his wife Lisa.

“I met Lisa and it's a remarkable feat on their part because they don't get any help from anybody. They get financial help from everybody bar the Government. The work they do – they were telling me, 3,000 people they helped, [they have] seven rooms where you would actually like to go in and talk to somebody. To continue that and to keep getting private funding for it, she and they deserve all the credit they can get.”

Now 66, Mick McCarthy is no longer in management and said he enjoys playing golf, spending time with his family, travelling and supporting events like the ACT fundraiser where he likes meeting the football fans.

“They were there when I was having my bit of success in '88 and '90 and then in 2002 of course,” he remarked.

The people who turn up for his public appearances are generally those who saw him playing and he said his playing years with Ireland were the best of his life.

“It was the time of my life, the happiest time of my life, the most successful time of my life. '88 European Championships - only eight teams in it, and Italy '90 - was the time of my life. I appreciated that it was the time of their lives as well, they all loved it and they come here to say well done and say they enjoyed it. So it's lovely meeting them.”

Born in Barnsley with a father from Waterford (who used to bring him to the local park to puck balls with hurleys), McCarthy was first capped for Ireland by Jack Charlton's predecessor Eoin Hand.

Hand was on the wrong end of some refereeing decisions which saw that team miss out on tournament qualification but that all changed under Charlton and his no nonsense approach of “get the ball behind their full back and get on top of them”.

Euro '88 saw Ireland defeat England (see McCarthy below in action against Peter Beardsley) and the World Cup in 1990 witnessed captain McCarthy guide the Boys in Green to the quarter-finals. The Republic also made it to the World Cup in 1994.

It was inevitable the run would end.

“When you're on a run of success, you'd love it just to keep going. But you know everyone else is watching you, everyone else is trying to stop you, they're all trying to fathom out what we're doing, how can we stop Jack's team doing this, how can we be better than them,” said McCarthy.

“But big Jack had an amazing career, 10 years, two World Cups and a European Championships. So it did carry on for him but I got injured and I had finished in '94. I was 35 anyway.”

In his first spell as manager McCarthy steered Ireland to the World Cup in 2002 where without Roy Keane, the team reached the last 16 and were only eliminated by Spain on penalties.

“It was a great time, a lovely experience,” the then team boss recalled.

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Will he watch the new movie about Saipan and the row with Roy Keane which resulted in the Ireland captain going home?

“Maybe,” he replied. However, when he met the fans in the Goalpost later, he was more definite and said he would watch it.

Asked to reflect on where Ireland stand now, he said he had not seen the first two matches in the qualifiers for the 2026 World Cup, a draw with Hungary and a defeat to Armenia.

He said he feels for Ireland coach Heimir Hallgrimsson because the players he has are not at the same level as the squads of McCarthy's day.

He said he has a photograph of an Ireland team in his home where all of the players were from just four clubs – Celtic, Liverpool, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur.

During that era Ireland could have as many as three players from one top English team, for example, Liverpool supplying John Aldridge, Ronnie Whelan and Ray Houghton.

“Three players from top teams. That's a lot easier to galvanise than getting players from the Championship. I feel for the coach. We haven't got the same level of players that I had. The coaches get the credit but you get credit if you've good players and players that are at a level. I don't think we are.”

He hinted that Ireland might improve if the style of play changed and likened the country's situation to teams making the leap from the Championship to the English Premier League.

“The three teams that came up last year into the Premier League all went down because they all want to play like Premier League football teams. There's all sorts of different ways of playing. I'd love to see them saying we'll stick a few balls on top of them and we'll play it to a big centre forward and have a bit of a ruck with them and see what happens and see how they defend.

“Jack came in and got the best out of us. That's the skill in being a manager and a coach, getting the best out of what you've got. If it turns out you've not got good enough players, it's tough.”

Rule changes because of Brexit mean that Irish-born players now have to wait until they are 18 before they go to England and that has had a negative impact, said McCarthy.

But regardless of who is available he said the challenge is the same: “Whatever you've got and how ever you play you've got to find a way to win.”

The president of the local Ireland supporters club is Donal Conway, the former FAI president, and he spoke of how impressed he was when McCarthy was brought back in as Ireland manager for a second time in 2019 during a difficult time for the association.

Conway had first noticed McCarthy's personal kindness when he met in in the US during the 1994 World Cup but the FAI was “at a critical stage” in 2019 when he spoke to him in his office when he was association president.

After a conversation which lasted at most 10 minutes, McCarthy went on an unprompted tour of FAI headquarters.

“He walked around the whole complex, he knocked on doors, he went in and he spoke to people and he exuded such positivity and calmness and humanness, and I told him tonight for the first time that it actually had a massive impact on our staff,” said Conway.

“We rightly regale Mick the footballer, the manager, the coach. Mick the person is actually a very wonderful man.”

Also on the night, Cllr Declan Harvey, a board member of ACT, said this year's James O'Connor Memorial Walk will take place on Friday, October 3 at Tullamore Harriers (5-10pm).

He asked the public to once again support the walk to raise funds for ACT, remember James and acknowledge the contribution he made to improving the mental health of people in the Midlands.

Said Cllr Harvey: “We do everything from bereavement, marriage break-up, relationship break-up, drugs, alcoholism, even depression. We deal with everything, it's a huge, huge cause and it's something very dear to my heart and the people of Tullamore.”

The master of ceremonies in the Goalpost on the night, sports journalist Cathal Dervan, singled out one of those present, local Ireland super fan Seamus McEvoy, for special congratulations as a lifelong supporter.

Dervan also revealed that McCarthy will participate in another fundraiser next week in his home town.

On Sunday, September 28 he will jump 15,000 feet with a parachute for Barnsley Hospital Charity, where both his parents were cared for before they died.

It is not his first time to undertake a parachute jump.  "Every time you do it you increase your chances of it going wrong," McCarthy quipped.