BACK FROM BRINK

How football star Colin fought back after loss of his beloved wife. Ex-Rangers favourite joins calls for ex-footballers to get more help

- KEITH JACKSON

COLIN HENDRY'S football story had it all.

The chiselled, square jaw and those flowing blond bombshell locks. Captain of Scotland at a World Cup Finals.

Champion of England with Blackburn Rovers. And then, in the final chapters, an all-conquering return north of the Border as a treble winner with Rangers.

Bone-shuddering tackles, eyewatering contracts and tailor-made tartan suits. He even had a nickname to match. But when the final whistle sounded on his glittering career, the man they called Braveheart was pitched headfirst into the most difficult and damaging battle of his life.

Over these last few weeks, some harrowing personal testimonies have come to light which point to the crisis in mental health ambushing professional football players when their playing days are over.

Former Hearts star Ryan Stevenson described it as the game's "dark secret" when revealing that the void was so crushing that it left him wrestling with suicidal thoughts. But few exiting the game can ever have been hit harder than Hendry.

Almost overnight, at the age of 35, he hung up his boots in order to become a full-time carer after wife Denise fell ill following botched cosmetic surgery in 2002.

For the next seven years he raised the couple's children while tending to her every need. Denise passed away at the age of 43 in July 2009. And football's dark secret had pushed Hendry into the blackest of holes. Life's better now. But it's been a long and bumpy road.

And today, in the latest unmissable episode of our new Off the Record podcast, Hendry has joined growing calls for the game to provide players with a greater duty of care when the time finally comes to hang up their boots.