When Jim Gavin named his starting 15 for yesterday’s Leinster Final the omission of one James McCarthy may have been something of a worry to the faithful throng of Dublin fans heading for HQ.
Equally, thumbing the pages of the match day programme bore no fruit as the Ballymun defenders name was nowhere to be found in the list of reserves.
The game came and went with no mention of McCarthy until Jim Gavin gave his post match thoughts.
“James just got a contact injury on his quad on Wednesday,” Gavin told the Irish Independent.
“We could have pushed him but it was five days and with the new rules, you need to put your team in earlier than what it used to be.”
Eric Lowndes amply carried the torch for James in yesterday’s Final and the boys in blue collectively got the job done to lift the Delaney Cup for their sixth consecutive year.
But thankfully it won’t be long before McCarthy is back donning the blue jersey as Dublin will start their All Ireland campaign proper on August 6th.
“James is a very experienced player but Eric (Lowndes) did very well for the team and played his part, and the players who came in played a team part”. Gavin added.
“Hopefully we’ll have James back. . . well I know we’ll have him back for the next day.”
