THE setting was familiar for a footballer, the situation anything but. Glen Southam had just finished tucking into his chicken at Nandos, and asks to be excused from the table.
Men and their mobiles. Girlfriend Luci isn't unaccustomed to the Basingstoke midfielder dashing out to take a quick phone call.
Except this isn't a quick phone call. In fact it isn't a phone call at all. Southam should have been no more than five minutes, half an hour later he still hasn't returned to the restaurant.
“I thought he was seeing another woman” says the 29-year-old, who despite living up north loyally follows her boyfriend around the grounds. Even getting – in her words – “sent off” at Bognor Regis, told to go and wait in the bar after exchanging some choice words with home fans daring to dish out stick to her man.
The former Eastleigh and Dagenham favourite, a title winner at each, wasn't whispering sweet nothings down the phone to another girl. That would have been so much more straightforward.
He was in a bookmakers a few shops up, and he was pouring hundreds of pounds down the drain on a computerised version of Roulette. His life, like the addictive casino game, was relentlessly spinning out of all control.
Hurtling towards self-destruction in fact. He prefers to steer clear of the specifics, but Southam's debt stands at a truly mind boggling amount. So much so that depression gripped him, and he contemplated taking his own life earlier this year.
“I wouldn't rather not name names,” Southam said. “But recently some, shall we say, unwanted guests turned up at the football club I was at. They went to the training ground demanding my where abouts and money, thousands.
“Luckily for me I suppose, I wasn't training that day due to my grandad's illness. But after serious conversations between the manager and the club it was settled, it was something way and above his call of duty. My debt was paid to them. He got them off my back, he had handed over a substantial amount. He is still supporting me now, he's helping me battle this and he is one of many people I owe so much to. But he went above and beyond.”
That ‘visit' was the tip of a rather large iceberg. His gambling addiction started in his early Dagenham days, arriving in 2004 after being noticed for his performances for Bishop's Stortford.
Days after leaving the Sporting Chance clinic, the best thing he's ever done in his life claims the 35-year-old, we all sit down for lunch just off of London's rammed Oxford Street. Christmas is coming, the perfect time to assess an awful year but one which he put himself on the road to recovery at long last.
Luci sits listening, still concerned and still wondering quite how it all came to this.
Southam added: “I would be visiting these places most days if I had money. If I didn't have money, I sometimes found money back then. I put myself heavily in debt. Heavily. Very heavily.
“In February I told Luci my background. I never asked her to help bail me out, but I knew I had to tell her. It was a huge step because I had bottled it up for years I was starting to have passive thoughts, I was sure everyone would be better off if I wasn't around. It was a consideration for me, an easy way. The pressure and demand both financially and morally was getting too big and I was hurting people and hurting myself.
“Other things add to it. I lost a couple of my uncles in a year, my dad was suffering. My grandad passed away, he deteriorated pretty quickly. He was my idol and that was a big thing for me – I had to get myself sorted for him.
“I was turning my phone off for a week at a time. People wanted their money and I didn't have it. Nobody knew how stressed or depressed I was getting. I wouldn't even speak to my friends, I was tired of it all and pretending to be alright.
“My way of dealing with it wasn't the right way. Football was my thing where I could switch off from it all, that was always the one thing to keep me going but that even suffered in the end. You live for the highs, but I got worse when my time at Eastleigh come to a sudden end from nowhere. I had just signed a new contract but the manager (Richard Hill) decided a few weeks later I wasn't in his plans. It devastated me, I live for that club. And in my head everyone knew I wanted to finish my career there.”
Then came the recovery. “There's no going back now,” he adds. “The Sporting Chance was the best thing I have ever done. I went in for 26 days, up and ready at 8am for a check in with the therapist. They ask a lot of questions, they want to know your first thoughts in the morning. How are you feeling, why are you feeling like that. If you say ‘good' they wanted to know what good means.
“If you feel like s**t, they get to the core of why. They get to those triggers in your mind. It's like a devil in your head.
“The huge part for me was the fact the therapists were both former addicts. James and Julian, they're recovering from drugs and alcohol. They have been clean for a long time, trained and turned their lives around, I couldn't think of better people to trust and open up to.”
Southam can't speak highly enough of the Professional Footballers' Association either, and with good reason.
“They put me in there, they are there the whole way for you and there's not a question they can't answer for you, not a person they can't put you in contact with,” added the ex-Barnet and Dover midfielder.
“It was my crossroads moment. I was nervous and anxious but it has given me back my life. My family, friends and my girlfriend are unbelievable, there are people out there who know who they are and know how much I love and owe them. I would like to thank them all.”
He ends our lunch with a stark warning. “I know there are a lot, and I mean a lot, of players out there who are struggling with this. My message to them is that there is a way of getting help as this is the biggest evil in the game.
“I would love to lead a campaign to highlight the malicious effects of gambling. The money in football is now scary, young men of 16 and 17 are earning thousands a week and finishing at 1pm every day. They need to know the severity of it. There's not enough being done. I am open to talking about my experiences to anyone but football needs to help before it's too late.
“It's getting out of control, I know this for a fact, and if I can help one person I'd be happy.”
