Liam Hughes finds his happy place
Looking in from the outside, Liam Hughes had everything.
A tall striker with a decent turn of pace, strong in the air with a powerful left foot and a clinical eye for goal.
At 18, after spending a large part of his childhood within Wolves’ Academy, he signed his first ever senior contract. A step closer to the first team, a step closer to the one place where he had always wanted to be.
On the inside however, Hughes certainly didn’t have everything. More accurately, he had nothing.
On the inside he was desperately struggling. Mentally, he was in pain. Unable to understand why, and, for the most part, uncomfortable about speaking up.
At the age of 20, Hughes was released by Wolves. A regular routine of fast cars, late nights, and various substance abuse – all to try to mask the mental anguish – was simply not conducive to the life of a burgeoning professional footballer.
A year later he was involved in the robbery of a local shop not too far from his home in Gornal. That led to a jail sentence, prior to which he was stabbed in an altercation.
That, in summary, provides the nuts and bolts of the Liam Hughes story. A story of missed opportunity but also of misunderstanding, of unrelenting pain and unbearable torment.
Behind it, the words and emotions offer a sobering reminder of the suffocating expectations and pressures which can afflict a young footballer who throws everything at their hopes of a career.
Yet fast forward a few years, and it also becomes a story about the power and resilience of the human spirit.
Hughes is acutely aware that he has let people down. That so many relationships with family and friends suffered because of his behaviour. But now he is making amends.
There is an argument, at one stage a likelihood, that he might not even have been here to be able to tell the tale. Thankfully, he is.
We meet for a coffee on an early Tuesday evening at the café at Morrisons supermarket in Bilston. Hughes bounds in with a spring in his step and a smile on his face. He has a very early start the next day, off to Leeds where he supports friend Chris with running several cafes.
His business ambitions also include – and this is the Holy Grail – one day opening a football academy in Tenerife.
By the end of the conversation, there is very much the impression that this should not be labelled as the story of a failed footballer but one of recovery and redemption. There is much that he still wants to do.
“Yeah, things are good at the moment. I’m feeling great and enjoying life,” he begins. “I’m still here you know, because I’ve been in such a dark place that when I look back, as bad as things were, sometimes I haven’t got a clue how I made it through. I was a kid who didn’t know what to do or where to go in life, and I just kept all those feelings in and eventually they just built up and it all spilled over.
“To be honest, it could have been way worse because I could have carried on living that life and carried on being in all that pain.
