McGrath Needs to Be Stopped

IT is the call that every Irish soccer writer dreads – and the phone has been buzzing for the past fortnight with the latest Paul McGrath rumors.

You can guess the story. Paul is back on the booze. Paul has fallen off the wagon. Paul was drunk here, there and everywhere from the Berkeley Court to Jury’s, from Roscommon to Salthill in Galway.

Sometimes the stories are false, the product of those who peddle malicious gossip in this land of the squinting picture phones. But once too often the reports have been deadly accurate – with the emphasis on the word deadly.

It is sad to learn that Paul is once again the worse for wear, sad to admit that his visit to the last chance saloon has again ended in a drunken shame.

He has fallen prey, like so many others before him, to the evils of alcohol. He is sick and he needs help, now more than ever before. Our help.

Paul is no longer capable of helping himself. He has made that abundantly clear over the past number of years as he has stumbled from one crisis to another, losing family and friends along the way.

He has almost lost hope as well, judging by the latest stories of his willingness to follow a bunch of strangers from Galway to Roscommon.

What Paul hasn’t lost is the respect of this nation. Not yet anyway. 

He is still a national hero, he is still remembered for the sporting achievements of the finest player to wear the green jersey.

Right now the Black Pearl of Inchicore needs the nation to repay him for his years of national service. He needs the nation to be honest and brutal and real with one of its favorite sons. He needs us all to be cruel to be kind.

Paul needs the nation to shout stop. He can’t. 

Months of treatment, a second chance at Waterford United, the goodness of the club chairman Ger O’Brien – he has thrown all those down the drain with his latest escape to the world of abnormality.

How can we help, you, me and the man next door? We can cut off the supply route, we can deny Paul easy access to the drug that is a real threat to his very existence.

It is all very well for a barman in Galway to tell the world that Paul was in “mighty form” on his bender down the west.

What I now ask that barman, and all barmen, is to stop serving Paul drink, as they are quite entitled to under the laws of this land.

And I ask all those more than willing to catch onto the coattails of his celebrity to stop for a second and think of the long term damage they are doing to a man we all look up to.

Sacrifice your quick fix of fame for the sake of a man down on his knees. If you see him here in Ireland please don’t ask Paul to join your company, don’t ask him if he’d like a drink.

Instead, just ask him to go for help. He won’t thank you for it today or tomorrow but he might some years from now – if he gets that far.