More than just your average football fan

He should be every marketing executive's dream, but then the very things that have in many ways endeared Paul McGrath to the Irish public have made potential commercial contacts wary.

With a career like his (83 caps for Ireland, PFA player of the year and more than a decade of outstanding service to Manchester United and Aston Villa) most footballers could have had their pick of media and corporate work upon retirement. But, while making his first appearance in Dublin yesterday as the front man for sportswear chain Champion Sports, the 39-year-old admitted that, though things are changing, he continues to find the transition to life in a suit and tie difficult. "It's something I have to do," he said yesterday. "I've known that for a long time because I knew that coaching was never going to be for me and I had to earn a living, but it's still taking a bit of getting used to. Whatever I've tried to do, though, there have always been people there who have tried to help me and gradually I think I'm getting the hang of it."

Mixing with people, he points out, was never a problem and there was always a steady stream of people looking for him to come along to a function and simply mingle. To start even coming close to tapping his real commercial appeal, however, he always knew that he was going to have to do more than that, and over the last few months it is something he has started coming to grips with.

"For the last while Pat Egan has been handling things for me over here and ever since then really there have been a lot of things. I've been back here maybe three times a week. Something like this (the Champion Sports deal) is a great opportunity for me and I'm delighted to be doing it and Pat has been talking about a lot of other things in other areas for the future."

His discomfort in the general vicinity of a microphone or television camera, he admits, remains a major problem but one he is gradually getting to grips with. When he attempts to sum up his feelings about appearing on television "despise" is the word that springs to mind. He quickly retracts it and goes on to say that, with the help of Johnny Giles, he found his occasional appearances on RTE's The Premiership last season somewhat easier going than he had anticipated. Still, what he likes best is meeting people on a one on one basis.

"It's the way I've always been. When somebody handed me a microphone I'd just hand it back. I've always found it hard to cope with and while I am getting a bit more used to it, I don't think I'm ever going to be at home with it the way you see some of the lads with it."

Still, he has the sort of broad popularity that just about all of the lads would kill for, something he says that stems from the widely publicised problems he encountered over the course of his career.

"I wouldn't like to say that people pitied me, I'd hate to think that that's what it was. But they saw that I had flaws, real flaws and maybe because of that they saw me as being a genuine fella. That's all I really wanted when I was playing, to be thought of as an ordinary lad who happened to play football and maybe with me, because they were hearing all this other stuff about me, people did think more like that about me."

Now they hear very little. McGrath visited Villa Park just once this season, Old Trafford "more than that but not very often" and he "doesn't get across to see the Irish team as much as I mean to", all of which he puts down to feeling "a little awkward" because he is not a player any more.

"I'm going to get back into it, though. After all, I started out a fan before I was ever playing seriously and I suppose it's just a case of getting used to the fact that that's what I'm back to being now."