West Ham EXCLUSIVE: Snodgrass on friend suicide, injury depression and Hull dark days

This is something of a surprise coming from a player who is generally considered a flighty, mercurial talent and a bit of a dressing room joker.

We were talking at the launch of West Ham’s impressive and potentially far-reaching Players’ Project, the vision being to use the power of sport to motivate, educate and inspire people in the local community by delivering life changing experiences throughout the season.

The entire squad have signed up to the scheme, with Snodgrass focusing specifically on helping those with physical disabilities. But it is also an opportunity to discuss all those less fortunate than ourselves.

A number of Snodgrass’s posts on social media are aimed at raising awareness of mental health issues, including suicide, and there is a very personal reason why.

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Two years ago, a player who came through the youth system at Livingston with him took his own life. His career had been ended by surgical complications following a back injury.

“You don’t realise how much depression is going on around you, how much suicide,” says playmaker Snodgrass, 31. “I lost one of my friends, Chris Mitchell.

“You see a lot of depression among injured sports stars who would rather be reaching their goals or at least doing what they love doing.

“Luckily, I have a thing inside me that I wake up and I am happy every day. But boys and girls want to live the dream and are looking at everything you do on a day-to-day basis.

“If these kids are suffering, it is important when they see their heroes making it clear there is a lot of depression and suicide all over the world.”

Yet many people assume that Snodgrass’s remarkable resilience to negativity is a sign he does not care.

Just last week, for example, former international Kris Commons suggested Snodgrass missed Scotland’s games because “he just doesn’t fancy turning up,” rather than an ankle injury.

The Sky Sports Scottish football pundit later apologised on Twitter but part of the problem north of the border is that Snodgrass had missed out on international squads before.

Having not played over the entire summer, many construed it as a lack of commitment despite a genuine reason for his absence: he was using the time to nurse his mum Irene back from a stroke.

“My mum has had heart-attacks, a stroke, and it all coincided with me being called up for Scotland so the timing was not good,” says Snodgrass with typical understatement.

“Thankfully, she is a great woman. Even now I have to tell the kids to take it easy. She is always out there determined to be part of the fun as well.

“I love her with every part of my body. People speak about money, but when she was younger, she was always trying her best to raise us in the right way.”

At the same time, Snodgrass describes dad Steven as “his best mate” and the “funniest man” he knows. Humour is something of a survival mechanism, because there was not too much to laugh about growing up in Glasgow.

Even when the three Snodgrass boys were given some bits of wood and some scaffolding netting by kind-hearted workmen, they returned the next day to find the goal they had lovingly built in their play area had been burned to the ground.

“We used to play on red ash gravel so we were always coming back with third-degree burns all over our legs,” he says. “But it was some of the best days of my life.”

It was another famous Scot, Bill Shankly, who claimed that football was more important than “life or death”; Snodgrass goes so far as to say that football gives life meaning.

“Football is still the most important thing,” he insists. “It keeps me focused and driven every day and that takes me on to be the best dad, son and friend.”

The darkest days, Snodgrass admits, came when he was out of the game for 15 months at Hull City with a dislocated kneecap.

That is why, when in February Sheffield Wednesday fans were wishing him “a broken leg” on social media, it seemed particularly cruel.

“You get some great people on there but also some sad ones and some evil ones,” says Snodgrass.

“Every single emotion – and Twitter is the way to vent that. I just try to have a bit of light banter.”

Instead, he sees the abuse as a sign that things are going well on the pitch – a typically Snodgrass glass-half-full assessment. To be fair, at the moment, they are.

Ahead of the visit of the manager’s former club Manchester City on Saturday, Manuel Pellegrini has the Hammers playing more open, expansive football with Snodgrass very much at the heart of it.

That is a far cry from when he first arrived at the club, with Slaven Bilic paying £10.2m for his services without knowing, according to the player himself, his best position.

Subsequently, Snodgrass went on loan to Aston Villa but things were not helped last December when co-owner David Sullivan tweeted: “My kids begged me not to sign Robert Snodgrass.”

Jack Sullivan is an unmissable figure at the club in his role as managing director of the women’s team.

But Snodgrass says: “There has never been anything in terms of any sort of problem. I see the chairman’s son on a day-to-day basis. I am only here to play football.”

Snodgrass would rather see the positives.