Last updated 09:21, Saturday, 10 May 2008

BACK in the days when he wasn’t fighting infernos at Gretna, Mick Wadsworth did a few remarkable things during his stint in charge of Carlisle United.

Not the least of these was coaxing a sustained spell of excellence from Warren Aspinall, who rolled into Brunton Park in 1995 with the brain of a still-gifted performer but the torso of an overfed pub player.

That was before ‘Sumo’ fell into gambling’s vortex and torched £1 million, before stumbling onto a train track in a suicide attempt he aborted at the last moment.

“Thank heavens the train driver hooted. I would be in a wooden box now,” said Aspinall, a naturally volatile character who also drank more than he could control.

After the latest grim bulletins on the mental disintegration of Paul Gascoigne, Thursday night’s BBC Five Live documentary on the mercifully-recovering Aspinall put another bullet through the myth of the indestructible footballer.