Drama queens who roll around feigning injury are a blight on the game, but football should always celebrate Will Miller's play-acting.
As a child prodigy, Miller – whose mother, Janine Wood, is a well-known TV actor - found fame starring as Oliver Twist in a major BBC production. After landing his role as Charles Dickens' perpetually hungry urchin, he played at a high level for Tottenham's development squad and with Burton Albion in the Championship until his career was brought to a shuddering halt by a serious knee injury.
During the long months of rehab, Miller's creative juices took over again and he retired at 23 to become a film-maker. Collaborating with former team-mate and England Under-21 international striker Marvin Sordell, his natural habitat is now a director's chair.
And on Monday their production company Oneighty's powerful short film Broke, a dark tale of dreams unravelling amid physical and mental health torment, is released and available to stream online.
When Mauricio Pochettino, who was Miller's head coach at Spurs, discovered one of his young players had already surfed the wave of fame, he admitted: “I had no idea that, as a boy, he starred in this big series. It was a treat for me to see him on YouTube.”
Still only 26, Miller laughed: “I had a great relationship with Pochettino – as well as being a top coach, he is a wonderful man and I have so much respect for him. I think he would love to see what I do now because when he found out about me playing Oliver, he even put a little section in his book about it. I'll definitely try and share the film with him when it comes out and it would be great to catch up with him.”
Broke includes walk-on parts for Leyton Orient's former Liverpool goalkeeper Lawrence Vigouroux and Matthew Briggs, once the Premier League's youngest player, among the extras. If it doesn't ring any alarm bells about the pitfalls of mental health among players forced out of the game, there's nobody home in the belfry. The timing of the film's release – World Mental Health Day – lends extra resonance to Miller's journey from child actor to footballer and back to the performing arts.
He said: “I was only 10 when Oliver Twist was made, and I wasn't really conscious of what was happening or the sheer scale of it. Now I look back and find it strange that it happened at all. Strange, but wonderful. I'm very thankful for the experiences, and maybe that experience playing Oliver planted the seed for what I'm doing now.
"While I was playing football, that passion was still there, ticking away beneath the surface. But I now realise the battle to win a professional contract in football is crazy – emotionally, physically, mentally, how quickly you have to grow up and the effect it can have on relationships. When that's all you know, and suddenly it's gone at the click of a finger, it's very difficult to deal with. I hope the film makes people aware that it's f****** hard when it happens to you, and that you have to deal with it and confront it instead of burying it or suppressing it.
“Football requires so much sacrifice from such a young age, all that resilience and competitiveness, and I think the game is certainly moving in the right direction in terms of helping players to deal with what happens next when the music stops. I've had two friends who I've seen with my own eyes, when a big game has been coming up or a contract is at stake in pre-season, they have been struggling with injuries and masking them because they don't want to miss it. As an industry, we need to keep raising awareness of what work, and help, is out there. When Marv and I came out of football, I didn't really know what channels were available.”
Sordell, who is the film's executive producer, has been an accomplished voice for ex-professionals tormented by the demons of mental health. At 31, he feels the “door is finally closed” on his career and persona as a footballer. He was an outstanding prospect at Watford until he was sold for £3 million on deadline day in January 2011, and he never recovered from long spells on the bench at Bolton and Burnley before his career petered out at Burton.
Miller said: “Marvin and I moved out of the game at the same time, and the transition from football to what we do now has been a fascinating process. Neither of us was forced out of the game, but I severely underestimated how much it would affect my mental health and I didn't deal with it very well because I didn't address it or talk about it.
“I've come to realise that people struggling with big changes in their lives is a really universal thing, especially if you fail to achieve your goals, or you don't live up to the dreams everyone expected you to reach. That's so prevalent in the game, especially among the boys who don't make it, and we felt it wasn't a story that had been told many times, especially in drama or fiction. We've had these life experiences we could draw on in making this film, and hopefully it gives perspective to players, coaches and parents. Being a professional footballer is a fantastic career, but it's such a bubble of a world. With this film, Marv and I feel like we've finally left football behind.”
Broke is released from 8am on Monday October 10 at www.brokeshortfilm.com, follow on Instagram and Twitter @Broke_ShortFilm
