Migration, Masculinity and the Fugitive State of Mind in the Irish Emigrant Footballer Autobiography: the Case of Paul McGrath

Abstract

The ‘confessional’ autobiography has become a popular variant of professional football autobiography in Britain. Co-written ‘autobiographies’ by prominent former emigrant Irish or Irish descended international footballers have featured prominently in this sub-genre. Their ‘confessions’ of alcoholism, gambling, infidelity, irresponsibility towards partners or dependents, or underlying ontological insecurity might be seen as an insightful engagement with their lives as male footballers in Britain. However, focusing on two autobiographies of Paul McGrath, and reading these ‘troubled’ accounts using psychoanalytic perspectives on sport, migration and masculinity, it is argued that they are contradictory texts which embody a peculiar variation on the emigrant “fugitive state of mind” (Davar, 1996), both approximating and deferring mature, reflexive engagement with the social and cultural construction of identity, allowing them to occupy a liminal but discontent imaginary space in which adolescent masculinity can be indefinitely extended. The homosocial world of men’s professional football is a key factor in this.