HILLSBOROUGH hero and ex-England player Mel Sterland sank so low after quitting football he tried to kill himself.
Former Sheffield Wednesday defender Sterland admits in his autobiography, due to be published in October, that he almost took his own life after injury had forced him to hang up his boots.
The book entitled, Boozing, Betting & Brawling (Green Umbrella Publishing), has been co-written with Sheffield-based journalist Nick Johnson.
Howard Wilkinson, Sterland's boss at Wednesday, wrote the foreword to a tale of soccer highs and lows.
"If you've known Mel as long as I have, you'll know there's never a dull moment when he's around; this book is no different," Wilkinson says.
"From good to bad, happy to suicidal, success to abject failure and wealth to poverty, it's a roller-coaster in every sense of the word. Mel's life reads like a novel, but it's fact, not fiction."
As well as chronicling the highs of a career which saw him win domestic honours and represent his country, Sterland's story features a heady mix of humour, gambling, punch-ups and run-ins with the law.
Sterland talks frankly about his excessive drinking, life-threatening health problems, a suicide attempt and being accused of handling stolen goods.
Sheffield born Sterland, who is now 46, made a name for himself as a marauding full-back whose attacking style made him a hugely popular figure among Owls fans.
He played under managers Jack Charlton, Howard Wilk-inson and Ron Atkinson.
After a big-money transfer to Glasgow Rangers, Sterland helped the Glasgow giants win the first of a record-equalling nine Scottish Premier League titles.
After switching to Leeds, Sterland joined a select band of players, who won league titles in both England and Scotland, but was forced into premature retirement due to an injury.
Cast out into the wilderness and told to get on with his life, Sterland struggled to come to terms with the fact that his football career was over and adjust to life outside the game.
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