Roy Curtis: Towering blue inferno James McCarthy still burns bright

A review of the Dubliner’s latest masterclass could only conclude that his competitive courage is immune to the ticking clock, contemptuous of the very notion of sell-by dates.

They famously pulled down seven towers in Ballymun. Against Mayo came the latest skyscraping evidence that an eighth continues to stand sentinel, the unbreakable, totemic guardian of the city’s football conscience.

McCarthy’s horsepower, vitality, his ferocious will to impact a contest when his team are most in need of an inspirational jolt, all of these qualities are siphoned from some internal and seemingly bottomless reservoir of combative will.

Into his 34th year, pursuing a record-shattering ninth All-Ireland medal, he remains Dublin’s lustrous crown jewel: priceless, timeless, irreplaceable, enduring.

As McCarthy’s muscle memory of higher standards conjured the second-half wave which rolled and crested over Mayo, next to me his former team-mate Paddy Andrews shook his head in wonder.

“That guy,” marvelled Paddy, incredulous at what he was witnessing from his eyrie in the penthouse suite of Croke Park’s seventh story press box, “is the same age as me!”

Andrews, building a reputation as a perceptive broadcaster, was marginally out with his mathematics. He is 34 to the Dublin captain’s 33, but the point holds. Croke Park on these defining days is an unforgiving arena, one that interrogates remorselessly for weakness, a 70-odd minute MRI scan that generates images of a footballer’s internal grit.

Again, last weekend, it revealed McCarthy as the life-giving sun around which so many of Dessie Farrell’s hopes orbit.

His on-field omnipresence and willingness to take on whatever role is required to carry his team across the line are rooted in freakish athleticism and the kind of desire found only in those propelled by a profound disdain for the notion of defeat.

Those with warrior DNA at their core. John McCarthy’s son.

Summer’s intense Croke Park interrogations are McCarthy’s natural habitat, the terrain where, time and again under the unforgiving sodium glare, he finds the best of himself.

David Clifford is a once-in-a-lifetime Leviathan talent, a Kerryman who can be measured against Kingdom hall of famers – Gooch, Maurice Fitz and Spillane – and still be considered in a class of his own.

If a transfer market existed in GAA, he would stand alone as the game’s most coveted and expensive prize.

Yet, while Clifford’s claim for historic greatness is already unanswerable, while his legs are the better part of a decade younger than McCarthy’s, few in the Dublin dressing room would contemplate a swap that involved losing their skipper to acquire the Fossa Hercules.

That is no slight on Clifford, but rather another battle ribbon to pin to the lapel of the veteran who has surely by now rendered superfluous that ancient question about the identity of the greatest all-round footballer ever to emerge from the big, blue city.

The evidence is abundant in that acreage of turf bordered by Hogan and Cusack stands, by the Davin and Hill 16, one man’s achievements singed into every blade.

His name is McCarthy, James McCarthy, the man Diarmuid Connolly this week labelled a Rolls Royce.

Held in authentic awe by team-mates, uniquely respected by opponents, beloved on Hill 16, Mount Rushmore’s slopes feel almost an inadequate parcel of real estate onto which to chisel his likeness.

The reverential stupefaction that colonised both Croke Park and Twitter during the second half – McCarthy had endured some difficult moments in the opening period – as he embarked on those signature forward dashes was something to behold.

Here was an emissary from a different world of competitive values, bending yet another afternoon to his will.

Almost liquid in his movement, like water through an aqueduct, flowing through the great arena’s central channel, irrigating Dublin with the nutrients of his gladiator conviction.

The very definition of a leader, McCarthy – behind whom Dublin will march into battle with Monaghan on Saturday – remains one of the more stirring sights in Irish sport.

It was the same against Kerry a year ago when, even in defeat, he unveiled a spirit simply incapable of wilting.

On one leg, under mad-dog sun, playing his first game in a month against star-spangled opponents arriving at the midsummer of their story, he put a Con-less Dublin on his shoulder and – but for Seánie O’Shea’s immortal final incision – might have carried his Sky Blues to a victory for the ages.

A monster of substance, incorruptible in his will to deliver every last ember of his fire, finding the very best of himself when his team’s need is at its most fierce.

Colm Basquel has stepped impressively from the margins to the centre of the championship photograph, but to find Dublin’s pulse you must first locate their swarthy chieftain.

McCarthy sets standards, imbues those around him with a compelling reason to believe in where they are from.

As Dublin re-announced All-Ireland credentials many believed lost on the wind, Farrell would have been within his rights to borrow maybe Alex Ferguson’s most heartfelt tribute.

It is the one the Glaswegian laird bestowed upon Roy Keane 24 years ago after a Champions League performance against Juventus so weighty that it moved even his flinty Glaswegian patron to the edge of tears.

“It was the most emphatic display of selflessness I have seen on a football field. Pounding over every blade of grass, competing as if he would rather die of exhaustion than lose, he inspired all around him.

“I felt it was an honour to be associated with such a man.”

Ferguson would have turned on the taps of approval had he been in Dublin last weekend, moved by another Irishman propelled by the same unflinching imperatives as Keane.

Another footballer who subscribes to a higher view of an athlete’s possibilities and a leader’s responsibilities.