The ex-pro striving to change attitudes to alcohol

Life looks a lot different for Fraser Franks these days.

Barely a day goes by where the ex-Newport captain is not up at the crack of dawn, heading to the gym or braving the chill of the Irish Sea close to his Lancashire home for a swim to invigorate himself for the day ahead.

He has just returned from a wellness retreat and former team-mates berate him for being in the best shape of his life - both mentally and physically - three years after retiring from football.

On the face of it, everything is rosy - and that is the truth. But the 31-year-old has had to fight hard to get to this point in his life.

The battle began one day in March 2019. Franks' world was turned upside down when he was forced to call time on a decade-long professional career due to a heart condition.

"I had no symptoms until that one sudden time," he said in an exclusive interview with Sky Sports' Dan Long.

"I have a bicuspid valve, which was picked up when I was at Brentford at 16, but I've got an enlarged aorta, too, which I will have to have open heart surgery on eventually. I'll need a mechanical carbon fibre valve because my bicuspid valve has started leaking more than they thought and I'll then have to take blood thinners for the rest of my life.

"The thing that was a bigger frustration for me was that I've never really had a symptom since, which is an amazing thing.

"If I retired and my knee was killing me or my back was killing me, I could almost accept it more, but I physically feel like I can still jog and work out. Part of me still thinks I could still do this, I could still give it a go."

The profession he had worked so hard to break into since joining Chelsea as a nine-year-old in 1999 was suddenly ripped from beneath him with little