When Tyrone McCarthy made the decision to walk away from Super League and full-time rugby at the end of 2013, he would have surely not believed he would be leading a side out in the Challenge Cup final, where he will face Leeds, the defending champions, 18 months later.
McCarthy, frustrated by a lack of opportunities at Warrington, his hometown club, chanced his arm and moved to the other side of the world to play part-time for the Queensland side Northern Pride, combining rugby with teaching.
But on Saturday McCarthy will walk out at Wembley as captain of Hull KR, aiming to help the club win the Challenge Cup for the second time in their history. It will mark a dramatic change of fortunes for McCarthy.
“We trained pretty much every evening with Northern Pride, and I had a job as a teacher based at the club,” he says. “I ran a rugby league programme with a manager above me and we’d go out to 13 schools around the district and set up a programme for young lads.
“To engage them to come to school, they had to go 90% of the time to get extra rugby league lessons. It’s something that worked really well out there and hopefully I’ll be doing that when I finished my career.
“The biggest crowd we got was 5,000 when we played Papua New Guinea Hunters up in Cairns, where there’s a big PNG contingent, but generally it was about 2,000 – and believe me, for a second grade side, that was pretty decent.”
McCarthy travelled to Papua New Guinea to play during his Australian experience. “They were building a new stadium in Port Moresby so we played in Kokopo,” he says. “It was an experience, put it that way. We had to get a police escort everywhere and were like big celebrities – they’re mad for rugby league.
“There was about 2,000 people in the stadium and another 3,000 outside. Driving round, they were all beeping their horns at you and the kids would run alongside the bus. It was a fantastic experience and one I’ll never forget.
“It couldn’t be much different this weekend. For that game you had to get changed at the hotel, jump on a minibus and go straight on to the pitch. The luxuries and nice facilities they have at Wembley will be very contrasting.”
Despite his time abroad, McCarthy is comfortably Hull KR’s most experienced player when it comes to the Challenge Cup final. Only Graeme Horne and Shaun Lunt have also played in a Wembley final and McCarthy, an Ireland international, is the only winner, having won on two occasions with Warrington in 2009 and 2012.
That first win against Huddersfield six years ago was McCarthy’s fourth appearance as a professional and he hopes a similarly inexperienced squad can cause arguably the biggest shock in the competition since Sheffield Eagles defeated Wigan in 1998.
“That first final I had a phone call midweek from Tony Smith [the Warrington coach] saying I was on the bench at the weekend and I expected to be nowhere near the team,” he says. “When I told my mum and dad there were a few expletives because they just didn’t believe me. It was a real whirlwind experience that first time and when I compare it to this time, it’s just about enjoying the occasion and the build-up more.
“Back then no one would have heard of me. I’m really excited about this – it’s a one-off game and the chance to do something special. We haven’t mentioned it much but there’s a real good bond with this set of lads, one of the best I’ve been involved with in terms of camaraderie, friendship and the way we get along with each other. Hopefully, we can translate that into a win.”
Hull KR are expected to gamble on the fitness of their half-back Albert Kelly, who has not played since the semi-final win against Warrington four weeks ago because of a knee injury.
The Leeds coach, Brian McDermott, announced his team on Friday with Mitch Achurch beating Jimmy Keinhorst for a place on the bench. Saturday will be the last Wembley appearances for three of Leeds’s Golden Generation with Jamie Peacock and Kylie Leuluai retiring and Kevin Sinfield switching codes at the end of the season while Danny McGuire will make his 400th appearance for the club.
Thanks to a wonderful coincidence, Saturday marks the 120th anniversary of rugby league’s formation and a statue featuring five legends of the game – Eric Ashton, Billy Boston, Martin Offiah, Alex Murphy and Gus Risman – will be unveiled at midday on the Wembley concourse by the sports minister, Tracey Crouch.
