McCarthy was named in the side late in the week. He surprisingly wasn’t nervous as he drove to team-mate Charlie Gardiner’s house in Melbourne and the two arrived at the game together. The roof was open at Telstra Dome and McCarthy vividly recalls an Audio-Slave song playing over loud speakers as the players walked out onto the ground in their suits before the gates opened.
McCarthy made his debut with two minutes to go in the first quarter. His opponent was Ryan Hargraves and he was positioned in the forward line. However his first possession came in the second quarter where Chris Grant went up for an uncontested mark of which he dropped “into my hands”, Gardiner laughed, “I gave it off to James Kelly who was running past”.
“I wasn’t too bad but I wasn’t too great either” McCarthy recalls of his first game with the Cats. McCarthy kicked a point and gathered 10 possessions and four marks for the game.
Geelong were convincingly beaten on this sunny day by eventual wooden spooners the Bulldogs. McCarthy spent the following week playing in the VFL side.
