Hooked to a few teams but only one game

Seán Moran finds in Justin McCarthy's new bookan absorbing, human story that parallels the evolution of theGAA

There's a junction in Cork city known locally as the Fingerpost. The directional signs are in the form of fingers pointing in the directions of Passage, Douglas and Carrigaline.

Within 100 yards of this place, in the week before the 1969 hurling final, Justin McCarthy provided one of the great All-Ireland injury stories.

A pillion passenger, he was thrown from a motorbike and broke his right leg in three places. A messy rehabilitation ensured that the end result was to be permanently left with one leg shorter than the other.

At the risk of sounding portentous, McCarthy ascribes to the accident - or 'The Accident' as it is solemnly termed - a change of life, the trick of fate that launched his career as a hurling coach, arguably the first of modern times.

Reared in Rochestown near Cork city, McCarthy's was an ordinary, happy upbringing.

There is genuine pathos in the departure of a much-loved older brother to the US, followed by the prospect of emigration briefly contemplated by the whole family.

Encouraged by his first mentor, a colourful Kilkenny Capuchin Fr Roch, to take an analytical interest in hurling, the young McCarthy developed his own practice routines in a handball alley in Rochestown College, where he still pucks about to this day.

A hurling stylist, he won senior and under-21 All-Ireland medals in 1966 and topped that off by being named Hurler of the Year. A major playing career beckoned.

Three years later, the accident changed all that. That he returned at all to an All-Ireland as he did in 1972 - and added a couple of league medals - was an achievement, but that was really the extent of it and he acknowledges that, not surprisingly, his hurling was never the same again.

With this came distance and he is a little hurt at the cool reception he gets when going up to the team hotel before the 1970 All-Ireland.

Injury prompted him to get involved in coaching and in his mid-20s he went to Antrim to help them win a first All-Ireland, the 1970 intermediate title.

He went on to coach 11 sides to 20 titles and last autumn took over the Waterford seniors.

His role as a roving coach is commonplace nowadays, but in the 1970s caused a sensation, particularly when he went to take charge of another Munster county, Clare - a move for which he believes he was never forgiven.

At the 1977 League final between Clare and Kilkenny, he sees Christy Ring - then a Cork selector - calling Paddy Grace over to give the Kilkenny coach advice.

One thread that runs through the book is McCarthy's uneasy relationship with the Cork county board.

From his early days as a player, there is a sense of growing impatience with the old-fashioned laissez-faire approach to team preparation - the "give them Cork hurling" school of instruction.

On inquiring before the 1972 final against Kilkenny what might be expected from his marker Liam 'Chunky' O'Brien, McCarthy is told: "Justin, you'll know all about Liam O'Brien by five o'clock on Sunday." He did, as Cork blew an eight-point lead to lose by seven.

He gets a couple of spins as Cork coach, but is aware that he is operating on borrowed time in each appointment.

Just 30, he's given up playing for the county but coaches Cork to the 1975 Munster title. The Centenary Year he brings Cork to the 1984 All-Ireland.Nominally he is joint coach with Fr Michael O'Brien, but protests the terminology to have been a county board artifice.

The continual sniping with county secretary Frank Murphy ricochets through the book but the litany of complaints about penny-pinching isn't quite as vivid as the image of Murphy - normally the model of mandarin restraint - belting out My Old Fenian Gun on a train back from Thurles.

A year later and defeat by Galway in naval battle at a swamped Croke Park combines with fallout from a strikingly honest newspaper interview about the Munster final to finish him with his own county.

Readers of McCarthy's column in the Irish Examiner will be familiar with his articulate hurling analysis.

He confronts criticism confidently including the muttered allegations in his own county that he is something of a mercenary.

But you feel that his heartfelt protestations on the issue are unlikely to convince the critics.

More substantial is the lack of warmth sometimes exhibited.

One of his players once said: "Justin was a brilliant, innovative coach, but you never really left the dressing-room wanting to win it for him."

His references to Johnny Clifford perhaps do scant justice to the rehabilitation of Cork between the All-Ireland defeats of 1982 and '83 and Clifford's heart operation in late '83 comes across as a tactical convenience to head off the county board's attempt to reinstate him as coach for 1984. But for all that, this remains a fascinating, human story that parallels the evolution of the GAA over almost 40 years.