TROON FC and former senior footballer Christian Nade has opened up on his suicide attempt and his battle with depression.

The Frenchman is one of the top names in the junior game after signing up at Portland Park at the start of the season. Nade has scored back-to-back hat-tricks for Troon and looks to be in a happier place. But he revealed that he tried to take his own life in 2014 following a lengthy battle with depression.

The 34-year-old former Hearts and Raith Rovers target man had “bad feelings”

for a very long time but that torment was only diagnosed as depression earlier this year.

He said in a BBC interview: “I knew what I was feeling wasn’t normal. I have been suffering from depression for a very, very long time.”

Nade was playing for Raith Rovers in December 2014 when it all got too much. He had played a Championship game against Dumbarton the previous weekend but found himself alone, at around midnight.

He said:“On this particular day, I was living with a friend but he wasn’t there. I felt very, very, very low. I wanted to talk but didn’t want to annoy my family so I just said ‘look, let’s finish it, so I’m not going to be luggage for anybody anymore. It just happened, it was not like I was planning it and saying ‘OK, tomorrow’. It just came in my head and it was a very, very strong feeling. I didn’t know who I was and was in a dark place.

“I went to the beach and started to send text messages to all my family, saying I couldn’t cope with it, even though I didn’t know what ‘it’ was. I told them I was really sorry, and I love them. I left my phone at the beach and walked into the water. I stayed there for a very very long time, then heard someone.

I thought I felt someone touching my shoulder but there was no-one there. There was someone at the beach, though, and I saw it was my friend. I looked back and the police and ambulance came.

My brother had got my message and phoned them.”

He added: “It’s a dream to be a professional player but also a very lonely world. You play for two hours a day and 90 minutes on a Saturday where everybody is chanting your name, but other than that you’re alone.

"Sometimes I would come back home and feel like a stranger with my friends, because they had done stuff together and you weren’t part of it. If you wanted to talk about it, they would say ‘come on, man, it’s nothing, you’re part of the family. But they don’t know how you feel. You would say it’s fine but it was not. Now that I’m better, I can see that it started from when I left my family.”

Four years on, Nade has been diagnosed with depression and after years of silence, he secured support from a Pastor.

“As soon as you start to open up that’s when you’re on the way to feel better. “ added Nade.