Connolly signed for Sunderland after leaving Hull City last summer (Picture: Getty)

‘It was too much. I couldn’t live the way I was living because it was killing people around me – my family, my friends – and mainly it was killing me really,’ he said.

‘My life was so unmanageable. I couldn’t control my alcohol. It got to a point where I had to make a decision that I needed to go to a treatment clinic.

‘I told my agent not to contact any clubs. I wasn’t doing this for football. I was doing this so I could get my life back. It wasn’t even the football that was taking the biggest battering, but my relationships, my family, my friends. Everything was failing and falling apart.
‘I couldn’t get hold of my addiction. It was the toughest thing I’ve ever had to do to go in there. It was the best and worst month of my life. I learned so much in there.’

Having signed a one-year deal with Sunderland last month, Connolly is hoping to get his footballing career back on track now.

‘After the last few months, it?s great to just be back playing football,’ he said. ‘I?ve had a tough few months, so to be around a good group of people, good gaffer and good coaching staff, just in general good people, I feel refreshed. 

‘I feel like that young kid that came to England again. I?ve got a purpose, I don?t have the weight of everything on my shoulders again. I feel like that 15-year-o...