LONG READ Carty’s Connacht journey nears its end - but will there be one last shot at glory?

Both of Jack Carty’s feet left the pitch last Saturday as Sean Jansen crashed over for the bonus-point try in Connacht’s 26-7 win over Munster. That extra point, to go with the four gained from an emphatic home win, keep Connacht alive on two fronts. They remain a point out of the URC’s top eight, but a win over Edinburgh at Hive Stadium on Friday could well clinch knock-out rugby and Champions Cup qualification.

Getting one over old rivals Munster made victory sweeter. Doing so just days after Munster’s Gavin Coombes declared his side “despise” Connacht was the whipped cream and glazed cherry on top.

For Carty, playing his 15^th and final season with the Westerners before retiring, it was his farewell game in Galway. The show could last a few weeks longer yet.

“I reckon I had around 30 people at that game,” he says. “I had a mate that flew over from London and mum and dad were there, with a lot of close family friends. There were also a few there from St Brigid’s GAA club, who were trying to tap me up – to go back and play there in a few months!”

Carty played for St Brigid’s growing up and represented his county, Roscommon, in minor football. He was a hot prospect in soccer too, and played for under-age Ireland teams with Jeff Hendrick, Matt Doherty and Robbie Brady, who all went on to represent their country at the highest level. Several English sides wanted him over for trials as a teenager, but he ultimately settled on pursuing rugby.

The 33-year-old, who is Connacht’s all-time top points scorer (1,278 and counting), was pleased that emotions did not get the better of him for his last run-out in Galway. “They showed a video on Friday night and these words came up – great team-mate, man of the community, great professional and club legend,” he said. “While the latter three were really nice things, the one that did really land with me was about me and my team-mates. There were these lovely videos of me messing away in the gym or on away trips. In all the gym videos of me, there was not one of me actually lifting!

“That was the only element of the weekend that really got to me. I savoured it, enjoyed it, but there were no tears or anything. It was this overriding happiness that we had won.”

Before Connacht were well stocked with Ireland internationals, chasing titles, and Dexcom Stadium was known as The Sportsground, Carty arrived on the scene. Asked for a comparison between then (18 years ago) and now, he laughs.

When I got here, the gym was so small that we had to be split into three groups and do rotations. It would be no bigger than the canteen that we now have.

“My earliest memories would have been when I was around 15 and Nigel Carolan had us down here for two and a half months in the summer. I was staying in Gort na Coiribe (student accommodation) with four other lads. Some of the best memories, Jesus! I don’t think kids nowadays would get away with what we did. Cycling to The Sportsground, hopping over the back wall, training, heading back, under-age IDs and trying to sneak out to nightclubs. Coming into training the next day with stamps on our hands and people asking, ‘Where did you get that from?’ Unbelievable memories.”

“My first game at The Sportsground would have been before even the Clan Stand was built,” he recalls. “It would have been four or five rows of steps. Buccaneers played against Sligo in a cup final, and we got the ‘home’ changing room – the one Connacht’s senior team used. Paul Warwick was playing 10 at the time and he left his purple telescopic kicking tee behind. I took it and used it for that match, and kicked six from six. I ended up using it for a few games, including in a league final that we won. Foolishly, I lost that tee and a couple of weeks later saw Paul was backing using it. I had obviously left it in the changing room.”

“When I got here,” he adds, “the gym was so small that we had to be split into three groups and do rotations. That gym would be no bigger than the canteen that we now have.”

The season before Carty got his first taste with the senior squad, Connacht endured a 14-game losing streak that stretched from September 2011 until January 2012. Like an amateur golfer that cards over 100 but birdies the 18^th, it was the streak-ending match that Carty can recall in greatest detail. “I was there when they beat Harlequins 9-8 in the lashing rain, with Niall O’Connor wearing 10, to win their first ever Champions Cup game.”

Scotland out-half Dan Parks arrived the following season. Carty made his senior debut against Glasgow. Pat Lam replaced club legend Eric Elwood as head coach. Connacht hinted at something remarkable by stunning Toulouse 16-14 at Stade Ernest-Wallon. The following season, 2014-15, Carty was tossed the car keys – starting 21 of his 27 games and building a tidy partnership with scrum-half Kieran Marmion.

Lam arrived in the west of Ireland caring not a jot about Connacht’s past – the IRFU had strongly considered axing them, as recently as 2003. All he cared about was how far he could take his men.

“Where we were, you had to be more than the sum of your parts,” says Carty. “You had to be different. I was only an academy player when he first arrived, and I remember Pat wanted every player to carry a rugby ball with them. On it, you had to put a quote on it that meant something to you. Regardless of where you were going – to the gym, team meeting, car park – you had to have a ball in your hand. I was driving one time and I saw one of our coaches, Jimmy Duffy, when I was stuck in traffic. As he was passing, I had one hand on the steering wheel and picked up the ball, in the other, to pretend I was driving while holding it.”

Pat completely transformed our game to something that was revolutionary at the time… You could see in that 2015-16 season, it just clicked.

Lam also sent his players out on six-week courses with Toastmasters, to improve their public speaking and confidence, before asking them to present to coaches and team-mates. He pushed Connacht out across the province’s five counties, looking to pick up more players from the likes of Leitrim, Roscommon, Mayo and Sligo, and widen the fanbase. Crucially, he massively changed how the team attacked games, and the opposition.

“I remember being at Connacht games as a fan and watching them putting contestable kicks up, on the opposition 40,” Carty recalls. “Pat completely transformed our game to something that was revolutionary at the time. He went with that 2-4-2 shape, which he took from the Highlanders, in New Zealand. That’s what our game-plan was based upon – handling, scanning and high ball-in-play time. You could see in that 2015-16 season, it just clicked.

“Pat would break the season into blocks and plot out the games – ‘Right, we’re going to go get four points here, five points there, we might only get a losing bonus point here’. Throughout that whole season, you could see that everything he was speaking about was nearly manifesting itself into reality.”

Connacht would finish second in the Pro12’s regular season standings before going on to defeat Glasgow Warriors in the semis and blitzing Leinster in the final. There were bonfires set ablaze along road-sides and in village squares to greet the league champions all the way back to Galway City. A party raged for a bleary, delirious week.

Connacht were league champions, heading into the summer of 2016, but only five of their players were selected in a 32-man Ireland squad to tour South Africa. That number increased to seven following injury withdrawals, but the Westerners had not fully convinced Joe Schmidt, or others.

“We had a good rivalry with Munster, around that time,” Carty notes. “There was an incident in the tunnel at half-time of one of our games. You’d know the lads from Ireland camps, over the years. It was very much team-mate versus team-mate and mate versus mate. A State of Origin mentality. Whenever you played a team like Munster, if you don’t bring it, in terms of physicality and collisions, you don’t really deserve to be on the pitch with them.

“For a couple of years there, there was always an inferiority piece with them. I know now that they would have been doing it to rile me up, but there were Munster players making jokes around the fact that you played with Connacht. I remember at the time it used to drive me absolutely insane. That fed into the rivalry – you were in the minority (in Ireland camps) and you’d have established players rising you, around the things they’d say about Connacht.”

Carty ended up winning 11 Test caps for Ireland, with 10 of them coming in the space of a year. Andy Friend took over from Kieran Keane, who only lasted one season after replacing Lam. The Australian’s arrival coincided with Carty’s performances reaching a new level. With Joey Carbery going through the injury wringer, Connacht’s 10 was Johnny Sexton’s deputy. He played well in a home victory over France in the 2019 Six Nations and a World Cup warm-up win over Wales. At the tournament in Japan, he replaced Sexton in Ireland’s opening win over Scotland. When Sexton was ruled out of the next game, against the hosts, Carty was in from the start.

I knew at the time that because I was new in the set-up, a lot of the blame would go on myself. What I was proud about was how I responded to the setback, when I got back to Connacht,

It started like a dream. Carty set up two tries with smart kicks and after 30 minutes, Ireland led 12-3. The following 50 minutes made for tough viewing though as Japan pummelled away. Ireland went scoreless from the 21^st minute and lost the game 19-12. “We got physically dominated,” Carty admits, “and Japan moved the ball in a way we probably hadn’t anticipated.”

“I remember being on the bus, after the game,” he adds. “I was beside Niall Scannell and saw the tweets coming in from Gavin Cummiskey (of The Irish Times) and think, ‘Oh, what is this?’ I thought I hadn’t done too bad, had a decent 60 minutes before coming off. I saw that tweet coming in and thought, ‘Ah, I am dust, here!’”

The Irish Times gave Carty a 5/10 rating, but others fared worse – three starters received 4/10 while Iain Henderson, Josh van der Flier and Rory Best copped 3/10s. My player ratings had Carty at 6/10. Bright start, shaky finish. He was not the only one.

“I knew at the time that because I was new in the set-up, a lot of the blame would go on myself. What I was proud about was how I responded to the setback, when I got back to Connacht,” he says.

Carty would play once more for Schmidt, in a pool stage win over Russia, but did not feature in the quarter-final furnace-blast against New Zealand. Andy Farrell took over from the Kiwi and, in 2022, brought the Connacht man in for a closer look. “I came on late (against France),” he recalls, “after they had scored, to make it 30-24. I put up a contestable kick that Iain Henderson got back, then played out the back of a shape and threw the ball to Dan Sheehan, which was called forward. After that point, my Irish career had finished.”

When discussing tough moments in his career, Carty still looks haunted by the memory of Connacht getting smoked 42-11 by Leinster in his first start after that 2019 World Cup exit. It is part of what made Connacht’s 2021 New Year’s Day win (35-24) over Leinster at The RDS so enjoyable. “In December 2018, we had been leading Leinster quite handsome (29-12) at The RDS. I had scored a try and made a line-break to assist Bladey, then Dan Leavy scored, late enough. In the final minutes, Leinster had another 34 phases from way back to score under the sticks, to win it.

“That (2021) game turned out to be my most perfect performance. I got two tries and everyone did so well. It was incredible. When you’re in that moment, you’re not even thinking. You’re just seeing pictures and thinking, ‘Yeah, go for it’.

He is proud of his last-minute conversion in December 2016 which delivered a Champions Cup victory over Wasps and picks out another game, from earlier this season. “That win over Ulster in Belfast sticks out,” he says. “There were various sub-plots going on. The fact that we hadn’t won an inter-pro in 10 attempts, our need to keep the season alive, and the fact that there were external question marks around my ability as a player. The fact we were able to get the win, in the (bonus-point) manner we did, makes it jump out for me.”

In professional sport, you’re going to have more disappointment, heart-break and non-selection than you’ll have games and moments like we had at the weekend. You’ve a lot of time to learn about yourself.

Heading into this season, Connacht had six players left that were part of that famous 2015-16 league win. With Carty hanging up his boots at the end of this season and Denis Buckley moving on, that number will drop to four – Dave Heffernan, Finlay Bealham, Bundee Aki and Caolin Blade.

Carty has enjoyed taking on that role of squad veteran in recent years. “In rugby, and certainly for me, there are so many ups and downs, so quickly,” he says. “It means you have to learn quickly. When I was younger, I felt I didn’t have that older player to bounce stuff off. So I’ve tried to be that player now, for a lot of the younger lads.

“In professional sport, you’re going to have more disappointment, heart-break and non-selection than you’ll have games and moments like we had at the weekend. You’ve a lot of time to learn about yourself. You can easily wallow in self-pity, until you get to a point where you ask yourself, ‘Well, did I really do everything I could have in that situation?’ That’s where the real growth occurs.”

A phrase that always stuck with Carty is, ‘People may not remember what you do, or what you say to them. They remember how you made them feel’. To that end, he speaks highly of Heffernan, remembers the kindness shown to him by Ronan Loughney, and perspective-changing conversations he shared with Andrew Conway, when on Ireland duty.

Life after rugby will show no let-up. Carty and his wife Sarah are expecting their first child in June. After the summer, he will go and work for his father, who runs the successful Oliver Carty Meats. He is involved in Cognitive Blends, which seeks to promote quality sleep, balanced hormones and sustained energy. Carty also has a stake in ‘Project Padel’, which recently opened padel courts in Galway and is seeking to do likewise in neighbouring Mayo.

With the end in sight, he is grateful to get a chance to thank those that helped him along the road. “There’s so many people that help you and support you,” he says. “The first ones would be my parents and my wife.

“When I look back to the early days and think who are the people that made me properly fall in love with the game, and pushed me, there is a gentleman in Buccaneers called Charlie Cooper. He would have given me my first bag of balls and taken me out kicking. Robbie Henshaw’s dad, Tony, was my coach there, the whole way up from minis up to Under 19s. Then I think of Nigel Carolan and Andy Friend, in terms of that middle part of my career. They were pretty phenomenal in how they shaped me.”

To make the URC play-offs, Connacht need to beat Edinburgh away on Friday night and hope other results go their way. Wrapping up our chat, I tell Carty that I hope his rugby journey lasts a few weeks further. He offers a short, confident reply.

“It will indeed.”