Back From The Brink

Product Description

Paul Mc Grath is Ireland's best loved sportsman & 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 & the World Cup finals of 1990 & 1994. But behind the implied glamour of life in the employ of great English clubs like Manchester United & Aston Villa Mc Grath 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 & 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 & 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 & 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 & determination for the future. It may well be the most candid sports book ever written.