McCarthy made his revelation on the eve of Wolves facing Fulham in a Premier League encounter on Sunday.
Last season, when the teams met at Craven Cottage, Fulham striker Bobby Zamora suffered a broken leg following a challenge by Karl Henry.
Murphy later criticised the aggressive style of play adopted by some top-flight clubs, including Wolves in his attack.
But McCarthy has revealed for the first time that Murphy made a private apology for his outspoken comments before the return game between the teams at Molineux last April.
McCarthy said: "I have had an apology off Danny Murphy before the last game.
"So there is no agenda there. I think he is a good player. I like Danny Murphy, I always have and he apologised for his comments.
"When people say things publicly then I think that apology should be in public as well. But he apologised before the game.
"And I certainly don't think what happened last season was anything to do with Fulham in general.
"That was fuelled by the Newcastle game here and then poor old Bobby Zamora gets a broken leg.
"As we all know, and it has been well covered, it was a good tackle.
"What I felt a little annoyed about is that a lot of other people ran with that, whether it be other teams, players, coaches, managers, fans, they were using it and it did affect us.
"We had a spell where we didn't put a tackle in because I thought we were scared of getting booked.
"We were wrongly labelled and it was a bit unjust. It was nothing to with Fulham. It was a general thing that went through the league and people were using it to glean an advantage."
As far as McCarthy is concerned the events of last season are now history and all he is concerned about is building on last week's opening-day win at Blackburn.
He wants to see more consistency from his side to ensure they avoid another relegation battle this term.
Wolves only survived on a dramatic final day and McCarthy added: "We
want to be better than we were last season and I don't want to be involved
in that dogfight at the bottom with two or three games to go.
"Putting back-to-back wins together at this early stage of the season would give us some belief. But the question is, can you perform consistently on a regular basis?
"The reason we were still scrapping last season with three minutes to go was due to inconsistency.
"That is what we have to try and avoid - a good performance followed by a poor performance.
"If we can do that then any thoughts of us being better than last season would be correct."
But, having won their opening game of the season at Blackburn last weekend, McCarthy knows his side will have to be at their best to beat Fulham and make it two wins out of two.
He said: "Fulham were one of the best sides that came here last season.
"In the second half they were better than us and we were holding on for a point at the end.
"They have some good powerful players and are a good team. We know what to expect from them.
"They may have a new manager in Martin Jol but little seems to have changed in how they play."
Source: Team Talk
Source: Team Talk