Legend McGrath on the road to recovery
When you pull up outside the house of a man who’s had open-heart surgery, you travel with some preconceptions parked in the passenger seat.
He’s probably in an armchair with a blanket over his legs. He’ll fall asleep after five minutes of talking. There’ll be bandages.
Ken McGrath makes smithereens of those preconceptions fairly fast, strolling out the drive to say hello and looking much as he did collecting All Star hurling awards in three different lines of the field.
When you say he looks better than you expected, he shrugs it off.
“Ah look, the news is good, I’m six weeks over the operation now, and it went very well. Come on in.”
The operation was a significant one. Anything to do with the heart is.
“Open-heart surgery is very serious, obviously, and it took eight hours in my case, but in relative terms it’s a procedure they’d do on a regular basis.
“They didn’t have to fly a guy in to operate that day or I’d die or anything, I wouldn’t want people to get that impression either.
“The big thing is to stick to the plan that they give you in order to recover fully. And every day you’d feel a bit better, a bit stronger.”
He’s up to a 20-minute walk at the moment, which is good going, but there are strict orders not to overdo it.
“The recovery process is long, but in a way the discipline of playing inter-county — minding yourself, watching what you eat, staying off the drink for months at a time — is probably a help.
“The hard bit would be holding back, a 20-minute walk would be all I’d be allowed to do but even if you feel you could do more you’d be tired, so holding yourself back and sticking to the programme is important.
“Contact sports are out, I won’t be falling in with the junior team up in Mount Sion or anything, but swimming and cycling and so on would be okay.
“I’ll be starting full rehabilitation at the end of June in Waterford Regional Hospital, and that’ll build up the confidence as well, to get back into that. Six or seven weeks of that will be a big help to get me back to full fitness.”
He’s had a fair dose already.
McGrath spent 10 weeks in Waterford General Hospital before the operation: “They discovered the problem early on when I was in hospital — in the first couple of days — but I had an infection that had to be cleared up before I could have the surgery. So I was in hospital all that time before I could have the operation, which was hard enough going. I was left out the odd day for a break, but it’s a long, long time to be sitting on a hospital bed.”
On one of those day trips back home, one of the neighbours dropped in.
Ginger haired chap. Played a bit. You know him.
“John (Mullane) lives only a few doors down from us here, he called down for a cup of tea one day when I was out.
“And he was saying, look, you’re out of work seven or eight months, we should organise a match for you, and he got the likes of Tommy Shanahan, Tom Murphy, Sean Power to form a committee for that.”
When McGrath says that idea took on a life of its own, he’s not kidding. The GPA got involved. Former players agreed to line out in a Munster v Leinster selection, managed by Davy Fitzgerald and Brian Cody respectively.
“I was concentrating on getting better, it wasn’t my focus,” he says.
“To be honest, myself and Dawn (his wife) were a bit embarrassed by the whole thing at first, but we’ve got the Irish Heart Foundation involved in the match now as well.
“We’d be hoping this could be the start of something that could build up a fund for former players, an annual game to raise money for them when something out of the ordinary like this happens.
“We’ve been overwhelmed by the response to the game — and by the goodwill generally, we’ve had bags of mail in the door, cards, the whole thing.
“In fairness, a lot of fellas left me off while I was in hospital but once the word got out I was back home after hospital, I’ve had hundreds of texts.
“I’m not the first fella to get sick and I won’t be the last, so hopefully this is something we could carry on for other players.”
He’s looking forward to the Munster quarter-final tomorrow. The last match he went to before going into hospital was the Waterford-Galway league game, a good win for the Déise, though results since were poor enough to ensure relegation.
“I think they’ve been moving towards a more positive approach and done well in challenge games,” he says.
“We’d always feel here we’d give Cork a good go, no matter how things are going.
“Derek (McGrath) is a good manager, he’s had success with other teams and he’s learning as he’s going along as well.
“I think he’s realising that you have to attack teams as well because if you’re defensive against a good side and they get a run on you, it’s hard to pull that back with a defensive set-up.
“If Waterford try to hold Cork and keep the scoreline around 12/13 points, I’d be disappointed but I think if they have a right go and get 18 or 19 points, that’s what people would be happy with.”
Will he watch from the couch or travel, though? “I’ll probably go up. A few of the lads go up from the club, park near enough to the stadium, so I’ll probably head up with them.
“The doctors want you doing as much as you do normally, so if I were to sit at home when Waterford are playing a championship game — that wouldn’t be normal for me at all.
“And after the operation, it’s not as if I have to avoid the stress of a game or anything like that. A good game, the fresh air, the slagging. What could be better than that?
“Thurles is only up the road, I’ll enjoy it. I won’t be having a few drinks, but I might have to drive the rest of them home...”
Ken McGrath coming to the rescue again? It wouldn’t be the first time that happened for Waterford in Thurles.
- Ken McGrath Rehabilitation Fund game, Munster v Leinster, Walsh Park, Waterford, June 27, 7.30pm.
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