“I’ve got a lot to thank Newport for… and a lot to blooming blame Newport for!”

Phil Steele is never short of a sharp line but the Black and Ambers quip comes courtesy of the broadcaster, after-dinner speaker and ex-teacher doing plenty of reflection.

The former full-back has launched his autobiography ‘Nerves of Steele’, a book that chronicles his battle against depression and anxiety.

Steele, now 55, can pinpoint the first bout: October 27, 1984. The Black and Ambers were seven minutes into injury time at the Memorial Ground in Ely, victory assured against his old club Glamorgan Wanderers, when he ruptured his knee ligaments.

“They used to put you in plaster and on the Monday I had a very bad nightmare,” said the former Wales B international from Ely.

“I still lived at home and I remember going into my mother and father’s room terrified, like a little kid. The next day I remember phoning Liz, my then fiancée, and breaking down in tears at the sound of her voice.”

Steele went on to get married, continued his career as a teacher and returned to the field but was plagued by anxiety.

“I went back to the Wanderers for a while as that was my little comfort blanket, then came back to Newport but I was never the same person, even though I played quite a few first team games,” he said.

“I had panic attacks goal kicking. If I went on the field knowing I was the kicker for the day, you’d follow the play down to the 22 and you’d be praying for the referee not to give a penalty.

“Sure enough, he’d blow his whistle and I’d build my little mound and utter up there ‘Please God, I know this isn’t going to go over but let me contact it well so it goes long and high so that the people on the sides think it’s a good effort’.

“If it did somehow go over, rather than thinking I had my kicking boots on I would be thinking ‘you lucky so-and-so, just wait until the next one’….”

Steele’s big chance came after he played for South Glamorgan Institute at Rodney Parade on December 27, 1982.

The Black and Ambers triumphed 53-13 with scrum-half Tony Coombs helping himself to a hat-trick while Stuart Barnes recorded a 25-point haul from full-back. Yet he wasn’t the only 15 to have a good time.

“As a full-back, it’s like being a goalkeeper in an 8-0 defeat. You might let eight goals in but you can also make eight great saves because you are in the game all the time,” said Steele.

“I had a whale of a time, catching the ball, running it back at them and coming into the line. In the lounge afterwards Bryn Williams, who was on the committee, said to me that I was welcome to come over after college.

“In the summer after I left I trained with Cardiff and Newport. Of the two, I thought that Newport were a bit more… I wouldn’t say welcoming, but they knew who I was whereas I was one of the throng in Cardiff.

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“I was also playing cricket for Wenvoe against Abercarn and was fielding on the boundary after tea and I saw this very fit, stocky guy running around in these bright scarlet tracksuit bottoms on with the stripes down the side.

“As he came nearer he said ‘Hi Phil’. It was ‘Spike’ (Mike Watkins), who had been in the Wales squad. I thought if he knows my name… “It was the start of a relationship with Spike. He’s a controversial character but was fantastic for me and understood my personality.

“If you told me I was a good full-back, I’d be a good full-back. If you told me I was rubbish and that I’d be dropped if I didn’t perform, I’d go into my shell.

“Spike knew that and was one of the prime reasons I was straight into the Wales B squad, he’d made me feel a million feet tall and of all the captains who understood me most it was him.”

Steele marked his debut with a try against Pill Harriers and then featured in narrow defeats to Bristol, Pontypool (“It was like World War Three, I thought the rivalry was all about Cardiff”), Neath and Swansea before they gave the Blue and Blacks a thumping on October 1, 1983.

He joined with his good friend Marc Batten, the winger who was inducted into the club’s hall of fame last year, and went on to make 54 appearances for the club, scoring 12 ties.

He said: “I couldn’t get over how big the Newport brand was. Compared to the college and the Wanderers it was like Manchester United, such a famous, famous club.

“I used to look like I enjoyed myself on the field so I think they took me to their hearts.”

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In the book, Steele talks about growing up with an "A-level in guilt" as an anxious child in Cardiff, of his feeling of claustrophobia in the away changing room at Eugene Cross Park, of the help from the Newbridge team doctor before speaking at a Welfare Ground dinner in 1997 that saw him change to medication that to this day is doing the trick.

There are the challenges of losing both his parents while he was in his 20s, his sister Ann when she was 37, his wife Liz to a brain tumour.

But his aim is for it to be an uplifting story with the penultimate chapter named ‘Team Kate’ about meeting his now wife five years ago, while he hopes that sharing his tale may help others and take away from of the stigma about mental illness.

“I’ve got a lovely life and while the book details a lot of the personal tragedies outside of the depression, I still consider myself blessed,” he said.

“People may think I haven’t got a care in the world; that I’m always happy and jolly on the pitchside. That is all true but I’m not like that on the inside all the time.

“The whole reason for writing it was that I think I’m better able to cope with it now. I understand myself more and have more wisdom about it.”

For more information about ‘Nerves of Steele’ go to st-davids-press.com