Joe McCarthy hopes he can inspire by raising bar for Leinster in Champions Cup final

Typically, he was involved in the type of rough and tumble that today marks him out as one of the most fearsome forwards in the sport.

“Dad had a video of me and my brother fighting in my room,” recalls the second-row, this week named the Nevin Spence Young Player of the Year by his Rugby Players Ireland peers.

“You can see on my wall I would have had a picture of Leinster winning the Champions Cup in 2009. When the club did that I stuck the picture up.”

Call it love at first fight.

“The first bit of rugby I played was down at Stradbrook when I was about six. I went into Blackrock which was crazy into rugby. I’ve loved it ever since.”

Leinster's Robin McBryde speaking ahead of Champions Cup final

Many years later, after a season where the 22-year-old has repeatedly demolished opponents with skittling disregard, highlighted by a ferocious Six Nations title-winning campaign, it seems faintly incredulous to recall his relatively belated ascension to sky-scraping eminence.

His only winner’s medal was earned in the famed Blackrock College but in modest circumstances, from the bench, for the U-15s’ fourth team.

Then again, we recall a certain Brian O’Driscoll once struggled for selection when he was a student there in the last century. Greatness is not always immediately thrust upon certain men.

By the time he left school, a growth spurt demanded attention and selection for the first team. He hasn’t looked back since, progressing to the Ireland U-20s through the Leinster Academy.

He could have started last year’s final but injury held him back; a slight ankle knock recently was not going to prevent him making it this time around.

“I rolled my ankle a bit but I was in training the next week, so just managing that, it wasn’t too much an issue,” he explains.

“I didn’t train in the early part of the Ospreys week but then just got training the end of the week there. I couldn’t play that game then.

​“I feel good, I’ve played 22 games this season I think, a lot of minutes in the bag, I feel good, match-fit at the end of the season. Last year, I just got back the week before when I played against Munster off the bench.

“So I didn’t play any of the knockout games coming up to the final. I was hoping that if I was fit I would play but unfortunately I didn’t make the team.

“I’d only made my debut in January that year so I hadn’t really thought I’d be playing in the Champions Cup or in a final. It was kind of surreal at the time.

“I feel very lucky to be in a final again because it’s not easy to win those or get to that position again. Once we’d lost that, you don’t know how long it will be until you get another opportunity so I feel very lucky to get another chance to go again.”

Twelve months on from Marseille, he will surely be one of the showpiece’s most influential actors, hopefully alongside a restored James Ryan as they tussle with Emmanuel Meafou and Thibaud Flament in the ‘row’.

“He’s obviously co-captain, a big leader in the squad and having him back is massive, a bit of input around the lineout,” he says of a team-mate who had a similarly spectacular breakthrough.

“I know he’s been a great person to bounce ideas off, just looking at how successful he has been, won Champions Cup, won Grand Slams and all that.

“He’d a serious rise when he came in, he’s a good guy to kind of pick his brains; definitely when I was coming through he helped a lot.

“Toulouse have won the most European Cups so they’re probably the strongest club in world rugby.

“You know it’s going to be a fast game, it’s going to be physical. If you switch off, Antoine Dupont or one of their other players will catch you out.”

After he became infatuated with Leinster, McCarthy remembers watching Leinster’s remarkable comeback win against Northampton in the 2011 side after his brother’s communion; prop Paddy will surely follow him into Ireland green soon as he develops his career.

All these years later, he gets the chance to follow in so many heroic footsteps.

Perhaps this weekend, some future Leinster star will pin his portrait on their bedroom wall.