‘He could rarely and fleetingly bask in his achievements’

I REMEMBER interviewing Paul McGrath after an international at Lansdowne Road. These were the days when players and journalists mingled at post-match receptions in the Wanderers pavilion and, if a hack didn’t push his luck, might get in a little exclusive one-on-one action with a boy in green.

Being notoriously shy in such matters, McGrath generally avoided media duties, but his innate kindness meant that, on this particular day, he agreed to a few words on the record with the rookie football correspondent for the Sunday Press. In what passed for a quiet corner of the noisy room, we fell to chatting, my tape recorder held a couple of inches below his nose, our drinks resting on an adjacent window sill. Suddenly, I was aware of a large figure stepping between us with such purpose that I had to swiftly withdraw the machine.

This was Ron Atkinson, then Paul’s manager at Aston Villa, and he was clearly intent on business. Without uttering a word, Atkinson picked up the glass from which Paul had been drinking and sniffed it theatrically.

“Honest, Boss, it’s just water,” Paul protested with a smile. “Just checking,” said Atkinson, satisfied that it was indeed nothing stronger. And, with that, the gaffer withdrew, leaving myself and Paul to continue talking as if nothing had happened.

Thirteen years on, I’m absorbed in Back From The Brink, McGrath’s new autobiography, when the following testimony of an old friend of the player leaps out at me from the pages: “I remember being in the Wanderers’ bar at Lansdowne Road with Paul at the players’ reception after an international game. He said to me, ‘Go up and get six vodkas and Coke in a pint glass and get a pint of Coke as well’. The deal was I’d give him the pint of Coke and keep the one with the vodka in my hand. Every now and then he’d say, ‘Quick swap’. He’d guzzle a load of vodka, then hand it straight back to me. Jack (Charlton) would come over checking. He’d take the glass out of Paul’s hand and taste it. ‘That’s alright then...’”

I never did mention the Ron Atkinson incident in print and, in fact, remember thinking at the time that it was highly indiscreet of the Villa manager to do what he did in full view of a journalist.

Like most of the Irish football media, I was aware that Paul had a problem with drink but chose not to intrude on what seemed a private matter, even on those few occasions when it was clearly intruding on his professionalism. The Big Man not fit to play? Privately, we might raise an eyebrow but in public we’d go along with the agreed line that those infamously “dodgy knees” were acting up again.

What made it easier to ignore the warning signs was the indisputable fact that, for the bulk of his international and club career, McGrath was simply outstanding on the field of play. People talk of the “functioning alcoholic” — who can hold down a good job even as his or her interior world is falling apart — but Paul seemed to be able to take the concept to another level altogether, performing so brilliantly for the likes of Manchester United and Aston Villa — as well as staking a compelling claim to the mantle of greatest Irish player ever — that only the man himself, and those closest to him, would have had any real sense of how self-destructive his life could be.

When Saturday came — or most of them at any rate — Paul McGrath was able to take things in his stride. It was the rest of the week that could have him on his hands and knees.

Back From The Brink doesn’t stint on the disturbing and often harrowing detail of a life which began with a tough childhood in a Dublin orphanage and encompassed a serious mental breakdown in his teens, before his already prodigious gifts as a footballer reasserted themselves and paved the way for a career that would make him one of the most admired and beloved sports personalities in the country.

Unfortunately, Paul also discovered drink at an early age, and a fiercely addictive relationship with alcohol meant his life from then on would be disfigured by bouts of depression, isolation, prescription drug abuse, failed relationships, suicide attempts, self-loathing and, even at the height of his powers on the football field, the kind of chronic lack of self-esteem which meant he could rarely and fleetingly bask in his achievements as one of the game’s greats.

The world outside might be chanting “Ooh aah Paul McGrath” but in his hotel room the man himself would be sitting on his bed weeping.

Not that it’s all doom and gloom. The memory of a defining performance against Italy in US 94, a display all the more remarkable because a virus had virtually rendered one of his arms useless, provides one of the book’s emotional highs. It’s hardly a coincidence that Paul was clean and sober during that tournament and on other cherished occasions when his natural inclinations as an affectionate father could make for a wonderful family interludes. He is right too when he says that he has been blessed with many of his friends, including football people like Graham Taylor, Irish physio Mick Byrne and Aston Villa physio Jim Walker, as well as coaches and teammates going back to his days as a youngster with Dalkey United. Many others, from all walks of life, have done their best to help keep him on the straight and narrow.

Yet, reading this remarkable book — superbly and sensitively put together by journalist Vincent Hogan — can never be a comfortable experience. Every good thing trails a shadow, every high is followed by a crashing low.

Even the title begs a question. Or, more accurately, a question mark. By his own admission, the book was finished at the end of a bad year for Paul, another rollercoaster 12 months of slipping and sliding. The brink, you sense, is still not too far away.

But he wouldn’t be the first to go there and come back — for good. Many others have made the journey before him. I hope with all my heart that Paul McGrath makes it too.