Teddy McCarthy's record will almost certainly remain unique

Big predictions often run the risk of backfiring, which is why one needs to have absolute certainty – or else a neck strong enough to withstand the backlash – before making them.

Unfortunately, the changes in the GAA over the past three decades mean that it’s not that big a call to say that no man will ever match the unique achievements of Teddy McCarthy in winning All-Ireland senior hurling and football medals in the same year.

Even if the male dual player was not an endangered species that the split-season has likely sent to extinction, the other substantive condition required – a county doing the double – is so rare that Cork’s 1990 wins were the first time since Tipperary had managed it in 1900.

Rebel All-Ireland football titles between 1911 and 1989 were limited to just two victories, 1945 and 1973. While Cork had hurling wins close to both, there was no coinciding. Of the 1945 side, both Derry Beckett and Jack Lynch claimed Celtic Crosses in hurling too – the former Taoiseach famously winning All-Irelands in six straight years – while the 1973 side also had its fair share of hurling stars.

Brian Murphy, Denis Coughlan, Jimmy Barry-Murphy and Ray Cummins all went on to form part of the three-in-a-row hurling side of the mid-1970s, while Cummins had also been on the side that won in 1970 (Coughlan should have been, but the fallout from a Glen Rovers dispute with the county board meant he was a non-playing sub despite being nominated as captain). Another Glen/St Nicholas man on the three-in-a-row side, Martin O’Doherty – who was the captain in 1977 – was unfortunate to miss out on a football medal in 1973, having played against Clare in the Munster championship before missing out on the matchday squad for the All-Ireland final.

At the time, All-Ireland medals were only issued to those who were on the panel for the All-Ireland. A similar scenario in 1990 left Denis Walsh unable to join Teddy Mac on the pedestal that he occupies. The St Catherine’s man played against Kerry in the Munster final – Cork hammered the Kingdom by 2-23 to 1-11 – and was number 23 in the All-Ireland final programme. However, counties were restricted to naming just six substitutes that could come on and Walsh was desperately unlucky to be excluded.

It is to the Ballynoe man’s credit that he harbours no bitterness. Speaking to Adrian Russell for his book The Double (Mercier Press, 2019), he said: “I wouldn’t be the best man for collecting medals or minding medals, but when I look back at 1990, the first thing that jumps into my head is Teddy McCarthy, but then as well I think of Mick [McCarthy] and his wife, Helen, and then I think of John [Kerins] and his wife, Ann, and the families.

“You know, it brings it back that way to me rather than saying that we achieved something that no-one else did. I just think that we had the reunion that time and Helen was up with her son, Stephen, and then there was young John Kerins and his brother, Paul, and it was fabulous to meet them. And for me to realise, it’s only a game.

“It’s important and it was important at the time, but it’s more important now that we have something together.”

Walsh can at least claim membership of the small club of men to have senior medals in both codes, having been on the 1989 football panel and played in the 1986 and 1990 hurling deciders, alongside Teddy McCarthy.

There are nine Cork players that can claim such a feat and just seven others, from Dublin (Frank Burke), Galway (Leonard McGrath), Offaly (Liam Currams) and Wexford (Paddy Mackey and Seán O’Kennedy). WJ Spain, the first player to win both, did so in football with his native Limerick and hurling with Dublin while Pierce Grace from Kilkenny moved to Dublin and won two football medals before returning home and adding a trio of hurling wins.

Apart from McCarthy, Currams is one of only two men in recent times to win the hurling and then contest the football final a fortnight later but Offaly, having beaten Galway in hurling in 1981, lost to Kerry in football. They would of course avenge that defeat the following year to give him a football medal.

The other player to come that close was Seán Óg Ó hAilpín in 1999. Two years later, Galway’s Alan Kerins played in both finals in the same year – the Tribesmen lost to Tipperary in the hurling but did beat Meath in the football.

The most recent dual-code finalist is Cork’s Eoin Cadogan – a football winner in 2010 and part of the Cork team beaten by Limerick in 2021. Indicative of the difficulty of playing both, his last year as a dual player was in 2014.

His brother Alan and Aidan Walsh hold the distinction of being the last men to play both codes in the same championship season, in 2016. However, their inclusion in the football squad came after the hurlers’ exit. It’s difficult to see it being attempted again.