Paul McGrath, My Lord, Paul McGrath

By: Daryl | March 17th, 2008

Paul McGrath beats Roberto Baggio to the ball Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone. Today seems a good excuse to pay tribute to one of my favourite players: Mr. Paul McGrath. Born to an Irish mother and Nigerian father, McGrath was raised in Dublin orphanages but went on to be (I think) Ireland’s best ever defender and one of the classiest centre-backs ever to grace English football.

Despite being very fond of a drink (which is the polite way of saying he was an alcoholic) and having disaster areas where his knees should be (which is the not so polite way of saying he had eight knee surgeries) McGrath had an outstanding career for club and country. A career which, fittingly enough, began with St. Patrick’s Athletic in 1981.

After just one season at St. Pat’s he won the League of Ireland Player of the Year Award and secured a move to Ron Atkinson’s Manchester United in 1982, where he won the FA Cup in 1985. He was never the quickest, but McGrath’s positioning and reading of what was going to happen was almost unfair. It’s like he was cheating. And he wasn’t your basic head-it-and-kick-it-away centre half either. Paul McGrath could play a bit too, and was often used in central midfield.

Alex Ferguson’s arrival at United was the end of McGrath’s Old Trafford career, the defender’s drinking and knee injuries not fitting in with Fergie’s disciplinarian style. Fergie offered McGrath £100,000 and a testimonial to retire with. McGrath said he wanted to keep playing.

And so he joined Aston Villa for a bargain £425,000 in 1989 and somehow played for seven more seasons, enjoying arguably the best spell of his career. Villa treated him well, wisely letting him skip training to rest those dodgy knees, and he continued be first to every ball on matchdays.

McGrath was Villa’s Player of the Year multiple times and even PFA Player of the Year in 1993, an award which usually goe sto more eye catching attacking players. After two League Cup wins with Villa and one league runners up medal, McGrath wound down his club career when he left in 1996, spending a year at Derby County and a year at Sheffield United before retiring in 1998.

His performances for Villa are now legend. I grew up around Villa fans (there are worse people) and they regularly refer to McGrath as “God” more than ten years after he left. The Villa Park faithful have two classic songs for their hero:

“Ooh Ah, Paul McGrath”

And the worshipful drinking song “Paul McGrath, my lord, Paul McGrath” (to the tune of “Kumbaya.”)

At international level, McGrath played 83 times for Ireland and scored eight goals. He was part of the legendary 1990 and 1994 World Cup teams that the current Irish team can only dream of emulating, and is most fondly remembered for his gargantuan defensive performance - at the age of 34 and with his knees about to fall off - in Ireland’s 1-0 win over Italy at the ‘94 World Cup.

Have a look at the bit of defending right on 21 minutes gametime (about the 8:25 mark on the video) where McGrath makes three consecutive blocks to deny Roberto Baggio and Italy, the last of them with his face.

Apart from the above, and the below disallowed goal against Holland at the same World Cup…

…there’s a scandalous lack of Paul McGrath YouTube footage. I guess YouTubers likes goals, not defending. But the fact that there’s more video on the internet of fans singing songs about Paul McGrath than there is of him playing is testament enough to the man and his talents.