Australian Football

Bernard McCarthy was an exuberantly talented if frustratingly inconsistent wingman and half forward flanker who played precisely 100 SAFL games and kicked 63 goals for West Torrens between 1922 and 1928. His five interstate appearances for South Australia all came at the 1924 Hobart carnival. He was on a wing later that same season when Torrens inflicted an eight-point Challenge Final defeat on Sturt, thereby procuring the club’s first ever senior flag. McCarthy had a tendency to be somewhat inconsistent, but at his best was acknowledged, for a brief time at any rate, as one of the most genuinely audacious talents in the competition.

Author - John Devaney