BY JOHNNY CAROLAN
AFTER reaching the county IHC finals of 2007 and 2008, Bandon knew they were close to a breakthrough.
They just needed another push to make it to premier grade. In Teddy McCarthy, they got that.
The final defeats to Fr O’Neills in 2007 and Carrigaline the following year were tough to take but at the same time it was clear that the Lilywhites had most of the tools required to push on.
After Mick Mangan’s one-year stint as coach ended in 2009, he had a suggestion as to who should succeed him and Colman O'Mahony, vice-chairperson of the club at the time, was happy to explore it.
‘I’m quite friendly with Mick and he came to me at the end of the year and told me that Teddy was free,’ he says.
‘Myself and Paddy Cahalane chased it up then with Teddy. He didn’t take much convincing really and I’d say Mangan, in fairness to him, worked the oracle for us.
‘Once he rubber-stamped it, Teddy didn’t need a lot of persuading.’
One of the key members of the Bandon team that made the county intermediate finals was James O’Donovan. While there were some survivors from the 1999 junior win, by and large it was a young side and having somebody like Teddy Mac coming in helped to provide a fresh impetus.
‘The biggest thing really is that he brought the knowledge of how to win big games,’ he says.
‘We had been to two county finals in 2007 and 2008, we lost both of them, and he just brought that bit of grit and determination that we needed. He showed us how to win, basically.
‘He was the right man at the right time. He was a hard man but he worked for us. We needed a fella to drive us on and to put manners on us, basically.
‘Teddy brought that bit of mental strength to us. The hurling was there, but Teddy was the route to our success.’
Opening with a win over St Catherine’s in June 2011, Bandon began to pick up momentum when the championship resumed in August. After a one-point fourth-round win over Dripsey, they defeated Aghada after a replay in the quarter-final and then reached a third final in five years as they came out on top in their re-match with Catherine’s in the semis.
‘What I saw with him was that he was a brilliant man-manager,’ says Colman O’Mahony.
‘He was able to get at players individually and get the best out of them, he was very good at that.
‘He was great at putting the arm around a guy if that’s what he felt was needed, but at the same time he wasn’t afraid to challenge fellas either!’
Bandon beat Fr O’Neills in the 2011 final, avenging the defeat of four years earlier. Then, up at premier intermediate for 2012, they made it to the decider at the first time of asking, losing out to a Ballinhassig side that was just down from senior.
‘It was Ballinhassig’s physicality that beat us in the county final,’ O’Mahony says, ‘they were just too big and strong for us, really. ‘The lads knew that they were nearly there.’
It took until 2016 for Bandon to take that next step but they would always be grateful for how far Teddy had brought them.
‘He had an aura about him, definitely,’ O’Donovan says.
‘Everybody looked up to him and what Teddy said was what you did, no more about it. You could see as well, even afterwards there was a link there – and we were only talking about it last weekend – when we won the county premier intermediate final in 2016, he was the first fella we spotted when we were coming off the pitch.
‘It showed that he retained a soft spot for us, he went to all of our games afterwards and everything. He had a good fondness for us and we had a good fondness for him.’
That mutual admiration was clear last November when Teddy attended the launch of the club’s history book.
‘The club were hugely indebted to him,’ O’Mahony says.
‘He’d be very respected in Bandon GAA Club and it’s a source of pride that that link is there.
‘He was a legend, to be fair about it.’
