For years Kevin Ellison suffered in silence and put his depression on the back burner. It may not correlate with the terrace perception of the evergreen Morecambe winger – “I was seen as the macho man, a big, bald scouser, who’s quite mouthy” – and nor does it chime with another, self-proclaimed, tag – “I’m probably one of the most hated players in the Football League” – but that is the point the 40-year-old is at pains to make about an illness that does not discriminate. Ellison became an accomplished actor, who effectively wore a metaphorical mask into work until the dark clouds subsided.

“The lowest I felt was driving up to training on the M6 and thinking to myself: ‘Would people’s lives around me be better if I just swung a right into the central reservation here?’” Ellison says, pausing for a second. “That was a very dark moment and I know my kids are going to read that in the future but that’s where I was at. Now I can control my thoughts a bit more and certain things don’t eat me up as much as they did back then. It is what it is, and if I can help somebody by speaking out then that’s brilliant.”

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Today Ellison feels healthier and happier but continues to do all of the things that helped wrestle back control of his thoughts, including yoga and meditation. “The lads laugh and think I’m going crazy but your thoughts are sometimes not really your thoughts; they’re not always you and some people can cope better than others. I was one of them where my thoughts overran me and turned me into somebody I didn’t want to be.”

He believes his struggles were triggered by his former partner suffering a miscarriage, the death of relatives and a form of job insecurity, with 12-month rolling contracts suddenly the norm on joining Morecambe eight years ago. Even now, Ellison replays angry confrontations with opponents and referees and wonders whether that was the depression seeping in.

“I didn’t want sympathy, I just wanted to get the monkey off my back,” says Ellison. “It was a weight off my shoulders. Now if I go in [to training] and I am a bit moody, the lads will maybe step aside and ask: ‘Is he OK?’ But, back then, it was like: ‘Why are you snapping again? What’s up with you?’ And I’d be like: ‘Nothing, nothing, I’m fine.’ But I wasn’t fine. Deep down inside, I was broken, I was hurt and it was killing me. Away fans reached out and my first thing to them was: ‘I still want you to cane me, I don’t want you to feel sorry for me and, if anything, I want you to give me a bit more stick to drive me on.’”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kevin Ellison in action action Crawley last season. Photograph: Ian Muir/ProSports/Rex/Shutterstock

Nothing is off limits over almost an hour of candid conversation. He says being transparent was deeply uncomfortable but necessary. “It is about looking at yourself in the mirror,” says Ellison, who believes Chris Kirkland and Danny Rose detailing their difficulties has led to an increased understanding around mental health. “It is hard, it is painful and it will bring tears but it’s the only way to come back a better person.” He does not want fans, teammates or anyone else to beat about the bush in his company. “As long as people continue to do that, I don’t think we will get rid of the stigma. People say: ‘You’re on X amount, you’ve got this, you go on these holidays, you have a nice house.’ Yeah, we have, but I’m the same as the person who works 9-5 in Tesco. I’ve still got feelings, I’m not a robot – I’m a human being … Football is what I do, it’s not who I am.”

Ellison turns 41 in February and, after signing up for his 21st season as a professional, he is determined to savour every minute, with Salford City next up on Saturday. The mantle for the Football League’s oldest player has turned into a case of who blinks first, though it remains with Crawley’s Dannie Bulman, a month Ellison’s senior. “I still get butterflies before I go out and when they decide to leave me I’ll know it’s time to hang the boots up. If you had told me at 21 that I would play professional football for 10 years I’d have snapped your hand off. When you get to 31, you’re just thinking: ‘Another year, another year.’ And before you know it I’m 35, it’s: ‘You’re a pensioner, a dinosaur and all this.’ But here I am still going strong.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kevin Ellison playing for Stockport against Burnley in 2001, aged 22. ‘If you had told me at 21 that I would play professional football for 10 years I’d have snapped your hand off.’ Photograph: Alex Livesey/Allsport

Last year Ellison had a laugh by contesting his paltry “pace rating” of 35 on the Fifa 19 game after revealing sprint results, as tracked by GPS monitors, that prove he is quicker than several teammates rated twice as high. In a video, which has amassed 1.5m views on YouTube, Ellison pokes fun at himself by walking off with a Zimmer frame. “Straight away my son said to me, laughing his head off: ‘Dad, Dad, you’re on this, 35 pace, a snail moves quicker than you.’ My sprint speed was 33km/h but I’ve actually gone up a notch this season. If Fifa do put me down again, we’ll have to have round two …”

Ellison grew up in Anfield and played for Liverpool schoolboys alongside Steven Gerrard and Michael Owen. He also played with Gerrard as an under-13 for Denburn Juniors. After moving to Hull, Sheffield and Lincoln, Ellison is back home in Liverpool. “The Liverpool players drive past my house in all of their flash cars – the Aston Martins and Range Rovers – and there’s me getting out of the Ford Focus. When I pick my kids up from school, they’ll be hanging out of the window trying to get a little thumbs-up off Mo Salah or Jordan Henderson.”

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Liverpool broke Ellison’s heart when they released him at 15. “They told me I that I wasn’t going to be a professional footballer … It gave me a determination and a desire to go and prove people wrong.”

Ellison believes he has played some of his best football at Morecambe under Jim Bentley, though they did not always see eye to eye. “We had each other by the throat in one match at the Don Valley Stadium,” he says of a clash when they were players on opposing sides. “It was a nothing game really but we were effing and blinding; ‘I’m going to kill you,’ all of this. But I was his first signing as a manager and here I am today, hopefully repaying him.”

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.