Martin Laursen was better than me says Aston Villa folk hero McGrath

May 17 2009 by Mathew Kendrick, Sunday Mercury

“I played through the pain barrier and did everything I could to continue including having cortisone injections.

“But it can get to the stage where it is bone on bone, it catches up with you and you know you’ve got to call it a day.

“I needed to keep playing football and I wouldn’t have missed a day at Villa for anything, or at Derby or Sheffield United for that matter.

“Martin has been in the best form of his career so the timing is so cruel but he won’t want to let the fans down.’’

Laursen refused to put himself thorough another gruelling period or rehabilitation for fear of severely harming his quality of life outside football.

McGrath admits during his career he never gave too much thought to how his creaking legs would cope throughout his retirement. But with the softly-spoken centre-half set to chalk up his half-century of years in December admits he is now suffering the consequences.

And nowadays McGrath utters the phrase Ooh Aah more regularly when he struggles out of his chair than his worshippers did on the Holte End.

“If Martin has decided that he’s worried about how his knees will feel for the rest of his life then that’s probably a sensible thing,” said McGrath.

“I probably should have been a bit more like that myself, but I was so desperate to play that I just carried on putting my body through it.

“I can’t pretend I can’t feel it now and I’m 50 at the end of the year. If I go to the cinema or sit down for any length of time whenever I get back up it takes me about 10 seconds to learn how to walk again!

“But every single minute of every single match that I played for Villa was worth it, because it’s a great life at a great club with great supporters,” he added.