James McCarthy's retirement from inter-county football has prompted a lot of tributes from teammates, opponents and fans from all over the country.
The nine-time All-Ireland winner will go down as one of the best, if not thee best, to ever play the game, and deservedly so.
The dynamic defender who was often brought into midfield as well, was known or his incredible athleticism, longevity, tenaciousness and dam right determination to get any and every ball.
At times it looked like the Ballymun native was a man possessed, almost demonic when it came to training, winning and pushing the body past all limits.
Although everyone is posting lovely tributes, congratulating the Dub on an unbelievable career, Bernard Brogan's story from a particularly brutal training session back in 2019, sums him up better than any medal haul could.
In his book Bernard Brogan: The Hill, the 2010 Player of the Year remembers one gruelling training session that Jim Gavin put the Dublin team through, and how McCarthy reacted to it.
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We begin with the Bronco fitness test: a twelve-hundred-metre-run where you go to a twenty-metre mark and back, then a forty-metre mark and back, and then a sixty metre-mark and back, five times in all, continuous running, no break.
Towards the end I'm chasing down Mannion and while I don't quite catch him at the end I've obliterated my time from January. Back then I did it in five minutes twenty seconds. Now I've done it in 4.47.
So I'm energised from that and I bring it into our next station, even though it's torture too - it's the tackle box, ten yards by ten yards, a man in each corner, two lads in the middle, two balls on the outside and sixty seconds of murder.
Then we go into another Bronco Test, and then another tackling drill before a cross-field match. It's animal. But that's exactly what we need. It's exactly what we want.
At one stage, we're in a circle, and James McCarthy, that great big silverback gorilla of ours that rarely says a word, is stomping around, grinning his teeth: Fuckin, love it! This is what it's all about lads. This is what it's all about.
And it is.
Needless to say that Dublin went on to win the All-Ireland that year, and the following season to make it six-in-a-row, a record that makes that team the greatest ever to play Gaelic football.
Never once dropped from the side, despite the candles on his birthday cake, there are few who would argue against the claim that McCarthy was the greatest player on that team.
