34: Paul McGrath, Aston Villa, Merlin’s Premier League 95 Sticker Collection

One of the many joys of writing this blog is that whenever you feel like you might be running out of ideas someone or something reminds you of yet another great footballer or moment in the beautiful game that deserves revisiting. Thanks to the ever-friendly landlord at the Football Tavern for the suggestion for today’s post. We hope this does the trick.

The passing of Jack Charlton in July 2020 was met with great sadness both within and beyond the world of football. As a player he was integral to the highly successful Leeds United and England sides of the 1960s. As a manager he had decent spells with Middlesbrough, Sheffield Wednesday and Newcastle United before taking over the Republic of Ireland’s national team in December 1985. With his uncomplicated approach, and a willingness to see a little bit of Irish in a whole host of players, the Boys in Green qualified for the 1988 European Championships and both Italia ’90 and USA ’94. Sadly Charlton was diagnosed with dementia in 2016 and, in the last years of his life, had little memory of his myriad achievements on the pitch and in the dugout. There were still moments of lucidity when watching back footage of his time as Ireland manager, as displayed in the exceptional documentary Finding Jack Charlton, particularly when one man appeared on his laptop screen. That man was Paul McGrath.

McGrath was one of the first to pay tribute to Jack Charlton after his death stating “It is difficult for me to articulate what Jack meant to me both on and off the football field. Throughout his ten years as manager of our International team, Jack backed me as a footballer and as a person - he became a father figure to me." These words would be moving at the best of times but coming from a man who had endured so much in his life and football career it meant even more. McGrath’s father had absconded shortly after his mother fell pregnant in 1959 and, terrified of the repercussions she would face as an unmarried single mother of a half-Nigerian child, his mother gave him up for fostering when he was just four weeks old. A brief return to his mother’s care at the age of five was followed by his admittance to an orphanage. The fact he made it to St Patrick’s Athletic to make his professional debut in August 1981 was a minor miracle.

After an impressive debut season for Saints, where he became known as ‘The Black Pearl of Inchicore’, McGrath was snapped up by Manchester United in 1982 and went on to form a formidable defensive partnership with his compatriot Kevin Moran. Although by no means a golden era for the Red Devils his performances were key to the side winning the FA Cup in 1985 and it was during this campaign that he earned the first of his 83 caps for the Republic of Ireland. However, the stylish centre-half’s career was blighted by injuries and it was during one of these early spells on the sidelines that McGrath’s issues with alcohol began to surface. With his knees conspiring against him and a young Steve Bruce challenging him for his first team place his relationship with new manager Alex Ferguson became strained as the Scotsman made it clear he wanted “a football club, not a drinking club”. At the end of the 1988/89 season McGrath moved on to Aston Villa.

During his first season at Villa Park he helped his new club challenge Liverpool for the title at the same time as playing a key role in Ireland’s qualification for the 1990 World Cup in Italy. On the back of an impressive second place finish in the First Division McGrath, and Ireland, defied expectations in their first appearance in a World Cup finals with an impressive run to the quarter-finals. Jack Charlton’s men were welcomed home as heroes but, despite the overwhelming positivity surrounding the Boys in Green, all was not so well with the talismanic McGrath. Ahead of their first qualifier for the 1992 European Championships, in the midst of alcohol withdrawal, he was unable to carry himself off the team bus and was sent back to the team hotel convinced he would never represent his country again. To compound his misery Ireland ran out 5-0 winners in his absence with John Aldridge netting a hat-trick.

In a 2020 interview McGrath talked about the events that followed. As the defender lay petrified in his hotel bed Jack Charlton walked into the room and sat on his bed. With the simple line of “I’m sorry son. I didn’t realise how bad you had it.” McGrath broke down and opened up to his international manager. In his own words: “Bad as I was, it dawned on me. This man might just get what this thing is doing to me. He cares. He really cares.” Although by no means the end of McGrath’s issues it certainly marked a turning point. Ireland narrowly missed out on qualification for Euro ’92 but he continued to impress at Aston Villa helping the Villans to a second-place finish in the inaugural Premier League season at the end of which McGrath was named as the PFA Player’s Player of the Year. A League Cup triumph in 1994 preceded another World Cup finals appearance for the Republic of Ireland during which Paul McGrath established himself as one of the best defenders in world football as he almost singlehandedly kept the great Roberto Baggio out of the game in a famous 1-0 win for his country.

After two more seasons at Aston Villa, and a further League Cup winner’s medal, McGrath moved on to Derby County for a season in 1996 where he helped the Rams establish themselves in the Premier League before one final campaign with Sheffield United ahead of his retirement from football in 1998. He is rightly regarded as one of the greatest Irish footballers of all time and the fact that he achieved what he did in the face of prejudice, injury and personal crisis is even more impressive. After he had put in a man of the match performance at the age of 37 to help Derby shock Manchester United with a 3-2 defeat at Old Trafford in 1997 his old manager Alex Ferguson mused “you have to wonder what a player Paul McGrath should have been.” Perhaps Jack Charlton summed it up best when he described McGrath as “the player we came to rely on” who “I felt I could have played him centre-forward, outside left, midfield, at the back anywhere ... and he'd have done the job for me in that position." His former United and Ireland teammate Kevin Moran said “he never knew or understood how good he actually was” but it’s clear to see that both in that hotel room in Dublin in 1990 and even after so many of his great footballing memories had gone Jack Charlton was very much aware of the brilliance of Paul McGrath.