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Back From the Brink: the autobiography
by Paul McGrath with Vincent Hogan
Published by Century in 2006
Paul McGrath is Ireland's best loved
sportsman and also its least understood. An iconic football presence during
a professional career stretching over 14 years, he played for his country
in the European Championship finals of 1988 and the World Cup finals of
1990 and 1994. But, behind the implied glamour of life in the employ of
great English clubs like Manchester United and Aston Villa, McGrath wrestled
with a range of destructive emotions that made his success in the game
little short of miraculous. That story has until now never been told.
It is a story that runs from a hard, hidden childhood spent in Dublin's
orphanages all the way to the pain of two marriage break-ups and the struggle
to cope with life after football. Quite apart from his all too public
struggle with alcoholism, the story runs through the surreal highs and
calamitous lows of a life lived habitually on the edge of chaos. It is
not just a football story. It is an extraordinary human story that is
certain to surprise with its candour. Here, for the first time, read about
the father he never met; the mother whose love never died; the routine
loneliness and ritual bullying endured by a black kid growing up behind
closed doors in 1960s Dublin; the emotional breakdown suffered on leaving
that institution; the recovery that - remarkably - brought him all the
way to Old Trafford; the rollercoaster ride that followed. Here, the guilt,
fear, self-loathing are all laid bare in a story fired with hope and determination
for the future. It may well be the most candid sports book ever written.
‘Gripping [and] unflinching... His story is as complex as it is
moving, as vulnerable as it is brutal’ The Guardian
’An extraordinary book’ Irish Independent
About the author
Paul McGrath was born in 1959. He joined Manchester United Football Club
as a teenager in 1982. He won 83 caps for the Republic of Ireland and
retired from football in 1998.
Back from the Brink won both The William Hill Irish Sports Book
of the Year Award and the Boylesports Sports Book of the Year Award in
2006.
