Established in honour of the late Sportsmail legend Ian Wooldridge, who died almost eight years ago, his annual award is voted for by you, the readers. It celebrates the combination of sporting genius and Corinthian spirit so beloved of 'Woolers'. This year readers agreed with the nomination of Darren Fletcher made by Northern Football Correspondent Ian Ladyman.

In the photographs that were taken when he was seriously ill, Darren Fletcher struggles to recognise himself. He had lost almost three stones in weight, his body ravaged by the awful, debilitating effects of the inflammatory bowel disease that at one stage threatened his life.

‘I looked horrific,’ he says, not out of concern for himself but for those closest to him. He reflects on how upsetting it must have been for his wife, Hayley. For their children, twin boys. ‘I get emotional talking about it,’ he says. ‘I can feel it in my voice right now.’

What he refers to as his ‘fighting weight’ would be around 12st 6lb. He says he endeavoured to keep training and playing, out of sheer bloody-mindedness, when he was as light as 11st 7lb. No weight for a 6ft 1in athlete trying to hold his own in central-midfield combat. ‘But I dropped as low as 9st 10½,’ he says. ‘Incredible really, because I look slim at the best of times.’

Darren Fletcher receives the Ian Wooldridge award from Ian's wife Sarah

Fletcher won the award for his courage and the way he has triumphed over adversity

It is some journey Fletcher has been on; the reason why he has been honoured by the staff and readers of the Daily Mail with the Ian Wooldridge Award; a recognition of his courage, his triumph over adversity.

He was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis in 2008, but it was something he kept secret from his Manchester United team-mates for more than three years. Only his family, the football club doctor and Sir Alex Ferguson knew. Partly because he was too embarrassed to discuss exactly what he was enduring.

But then it must take some doing, explaining to friends and colleagues that you need the bathroom up to 30 times a day; that you can’t go out for a meal with your family; won’t dare run the kids to school or watch them play football; can’t entertain the idea of ever being more than sprinting distance from the nearest toilet. And it is not as simple as just needing the loo. Sometimes you need to go straight to hospital.

Today, however, Fletcher does want to talk. Because of the very personal nature of what he is here to discuss, it is still not easy for a footballer who has never been one to court the media spotlight.

But he tells his story now out of a sense of duty to others; to the one in every 210 people in the UK who suffers with either ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s disease; to the children he has just been chatting to, with such genuine warmth and kindness, at the inflammatory bowel disease unit at the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital.

The Manchester United midfielder talked to Sportsmail's Matt Lawton about his battle against illness

I couldn’t even take the kids to the park — it was so scary

‘I talk to them and they tell me it’s easier for them to explain to their friends at school if they can say, “I’ve got the same illness as Darren Fletcher”,’ he says.

‘And the fact that I’ve come through it and got back to playing professional football after suffering with it for so long, I think it gives people hope.

‘I recognise the power of football, the power of a name like Manchester United. It’s why I’m now a role model for the charity United For Colitis, because I know how difficult an illness it is to deal with and I’m willing to do what I can to help.’

He glances across the room to the children he has just met.

‘It’s the kids I feel for the most,’ he says. ‘Sometimes they’ve lost weight, they’ve no colour in their faces. You can see they are suffering but they don’t want to let people know they are suffering, because aspects of the illness are embarrassing and they don’t want to talk about it.

Fletcher visits the inflammatory bowel disease unit at the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital

‘It’s hard enough for an adult but for a young child, going to school with those symptoms, it will be tough. I just hope I can give them the belief that they can overcome this.’

He admits to being dismissive of his own illness at first. ‘I was blase about it,’ he says, remembering his first ‘flare-up’ six years ago. ‘It was diagnosed immediately but I recovered quickly. In my own mind I was still top of my game, strong, playing in the Premier League. I felt invincible.’

The illness would, of course, return with a vengeance, forcing him to tell the club doctor as well as Ferguson.

‘For everything he has done for me in football, the way he gave me my chance, the way he believed in me, I will always be grateful to him for that,’ says Fletcher. ‘But he was also a really caring, kind individual who did everything to help me and protect me when I was ill. For me and my family.

‘He gave me the time off I needed, told me not to worry about contract situations, told me to think of my health and my family first; to forget about football and just focus on that.

‘He was constantly there for me. There were times when I went in looking terrible and he told me I looked great. He’d just try to give me a bit of confidence.

Fletcher hopes to give young children with the same symptoms as him the belief to overcome the illness

‘I owe him everything in my career but he rose to a different level for me in the way he supported me through this.

‘Even after he retired he would still be on the phone, to see how my recovery was going. Sometimes he would call just to speak to my wife. He knew she was probably suffering more than me.

‘It was killing her seeing me, knowing I wasn’t the same person because I was ill. He’d be on the phone to her for half an hour. We are very grateful to him for that.’

Ferguson helped Fletcher keep the illness from the other players.

‘We decided to just play it down as a random illness, like a bug, but that became very difficult as time went on,’ he says. ‘People started to realise there was something wrong. They’d ask why it kept happening.’

There were side-effects associated with his medication, a mixture of drugs to treat the illness and high-dose steroids to control the symptoms.

‘I would suffer with something they call moon face,’ he says. ‘You’re slim all over but your face becomes very bloated.

Fletcher recalls not being able to go out for a meal, always needing to go to the toilet and losing weight

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‘Then there were the pounding headaches, and the constant need for the bathroom. Other drugs I took I suffered some strong reactions to. One morning, when I was supposed to be going training, I woke up in bed unable to move a single muscle. I was on a drug trial for a week and they said it might happen. But it was obviously alarming, even if it was dealt with pretty much instantly with an injection.’

He was ill but he was still determined to play football. ‘Training actually gave me a bit of a release,’ he says. ‘I’m not exactly sure why but I didn’t suffer any symptoms when I was training.

‘As soon as I stopped all the symptoms would return. So over 24 hours that two hours was my only escape. In that short time I didn’t have ulcerative colitis. It’s probably why I kept pushing myself when I probably shouldn’t have been.

‘That said, if I hadn’t lived as near as I do to the training ground I probably wouldn’t have made it in. You’re living constantly with the fear of being caught out somewhere. In traffic, in the park with the kids, going out for a meal. It becomes very scary.

The midfielder thanked former Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson for the support he gave him

‘I wouldn’t go to restaurants because I might need to go to the toilet five or six times. I was conscious of being recognised and people wondering why I was up and down all the time.’

Again, he feels more for his family than for himself. ‘I was diagnosed very soon after we got married,’ he says, again becoming emotional. ‘I always felt she had got married and I wasn’t the person she married. She never once complained that we never went out, even for a meal.

‘I was so ill and I was probably taking out some of my frustration on her. But she was so strong. Unbelievable really. She phoned the club doctor one time. I wasn’t happy about it. But the doctor arrived at the door and took me to hospital. That night I was lying there on a drip. I was losing that much blood. Honestly, the number of times I ended up in hospital because of low blood levels...’

How he managed to keep playing between courses of treatment is testament to just how tough this 30-year-old Scot really is. Particularly when there were other problems, beyond the actual illness, with which he had to deal.

Fletcher made his return against Hull on Boxing Day last year, his first league start for 390 days

Fletcher thinks the fact that he was on steroids — something for which he was granted approval from the relevant authorities — made him more of a target for drug testers. ‘I had to be so careful,’ he says. ‘But I was tested so many times. I might be being a bit over-sensitive but I felt I was targeted.’

The Manchester United midfielder and wife Hayley

Eventually, in December 2011 after a Champions League encounter against Basle, he decided he had to tell his team-mates. It was too obvious something was seriously wrong. Too big a secret to keep.

‘I didn’t tell everyone,’ he says. ‘Just a group of lads I’m particularly close to. We were sitting having a meal after the game — Wayne Rooney and Rio Ferdinand were there — and I knew they’d pass it on to the rest of the lads. I just said I was going to have to take a break because of this illness, and they were so sympathetic and understanding. Just brilliant.’

Medication remained the favoured alternative to operations, but his body failed to respond to the medication and in the end he had to face up to the prospect of surgery. He was terrified.

‘I was prepared to just keep taking the steroids, to even put up with the bloated face and the headaches, but the doctors said I couldn’t stay on them for ever,’ he says. ‘Eventually it would have had a huge impact on my body, on my organs. I would have been a complete mess.

‘At the same time people close to me were getting worried because my bowel was in a bad way. There was a concern it could perforate at any time, almost explode inside me. They’d worry it might happen when I was driving up to Scotland, in the middle of nowhere.

‘I don’t like talking about death because I don’t think I ever really thought about it. But I would have been in trouble if something like that had happened. I had kept battling, kept trying other forms of treatment; anything to avoid going through that series of operations.

‘But then that day arrives, when you realise that life is just non-existent, you are almost begging them to take you. You go from putting off surgery and being petrified of it to this sense of desperation; you’re that low, you’re like “take me now”.’

Fletcher feels he is now able to live a normal life again after his battle against a crippling illness

Now there’s nothing to stop me... I can live a normal life

The first of three major operations was in January last year. ‘They remove your large intestine, because ulcerative colitis is an illness of the large intestine,’ he says. ‘That’s the difference with Crohn’s. That affects the large and small intestine.

'With ulcerative colitis, if you remove the large intestine you remove the illness. But it’s not a simple operation. It’s a three-part procedure but there’s the question of whether your body will adapt to removing your bowel and creating a new system. If it doesn’t you’re left in a very difficult situation, and you are made aware of all the possible eventualities; what could go wrong. That I found scary.

‘So the biggest thing was plucking up the courage to do it. I was offered the operation 18 months before I went for it but I eventually reached a point where I was no longer scared. I just wanted it done, determined to come out the other side and come back from it.’

He still passed on the invitation to have an epidural for each of the three operations, simply because he did not like the sound of the risks associated with that particular form of pain relief. ‘They give you a leaflet about the number of people who suffer side effects,’ he says. ‘It’s rare but similar to the number of people who get ulcerative colitis. And I just thought, that will probably be me, too, then. They thought I was crazy but it was just pain, and I can handle it. And I didn’t like the numbers.’

The surgery was a success, so much so Fletcher refers to the surgeon — Pete Sagar — as his ‘hero’.

The Scottish midfielder played for United in their 2-1 victory at Southampton on Monday

Hardly surprising after the six years he had endured; six years of battling with an illness that seriously undermined his ability to make the most of the considerable talent he possesses.

‘The last operation was in August 2013 and by October I was back in the reserves, and by December playing again for the first team,’ he says. ‘My weight was coming back on every week and I was feeling better and better; fantastic.

‘I’m probably slightly different to normal people but I feel normal. If I eat, things will happen faster but it’s with full control and at my discretion. For me that’s amazing.

‘I don’t feel ill any more. It’s not an issue in my life at all now. I eat carefully because of my football but if I want a takeaway I can have one.’

Fletcher is United's longest-serving player and is pictured playing Deportivo La Coruna in 2003

When Fletcher was selected on Boxing Day last year for an encounter with Hull City, it was the first league start in 390 days for someone who is now the longest-serving player at United; who moved down from Scotland at 15 and 15 years on now wants to make up for lost time; who noted on the return flight from Southampton on Monday night, after the draw had been made, that he was the only member of the dressing room to have won the FA Cup with United.

‘Whenever I played before, I was always thinking about the next setback with the illness,’ he says. ‘Now there’s nothing stopping me, and since I came back from surgery I’ve missed just one day’s training. I’m living a normal life again. I’m going out for meals with my wife (left) and I love being on the touchline watching my boys play football.’

Mr Wooldridge would have been delighted to hear that.

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Darren Fletcher is a patron for United For Colitis, a charitable initiative that supports those affected by Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.