THE Wire’s strength and conditioning coach and former captain Jon Clarke has told of times where he thought he could not carry on with his career.

This week’s State of Mind round will see charity volunteers promote mental health awareness at all six games across the weekend.

Clarke, 37, made more than 230 appearances for Wolves before spending the final three years of his playing career at Widnes.

The hooker had several up and downs in his career, but will look back at his playing days with fondness.

“You think you are okay and then something comes along and wipes you out,” he said.

“For me, that coincided with when I left Warrington. I’d been there for 10/11 years, won a couple of things, played for Great Britain and to leave that was a culture shock, it was difficult.

“Only 3 or 4 months earlier, my brother-in-law Paul Darbyshire died of motor neurone disease, so I had helped nurse him through six months of the worst time of his life and even the worst time in everyone else’s life.”

The feelings at losing his brother-in-law started to creep into his playing career, to the point where he felt he could not continue playing.

“I went and joined Widnes and that first season there was the worst season I’ve played of rugby league,” he said.

“I didn’t want to go back to pre-season. I had to tell Denis (Betts, Widnes head coach) I couldn’t go back, I didn’t want to go back.

“I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning. I used to sit in the corner in my kitchen and just cry because of what had gone on with Paul, and his kids and my sister that he had left behind. I couldn’t get my head round how unfair it was.

“I thought I was mentally tough until that came along and that just wiped me out until the next pre-season.

“I thought I’m not going to finish my career like this, and I knew Darbs wouldn’t want me to finish my career on a real downer, because that first season at Widnes was tough. We got beat virtually every week, I was captain, and all my performances were terrible.

“For the second year I absolutely trained the house down in the off-season and I went and got player of the year for the club that season.”

Visit stateofmindsport.org. You can donate to the State of Mind charity by visiting justgiving.com/state-om/donate/