Mark Bosnich GoalKeeping photo by Getty Images

Did anything bad ever happen when you didn’t perform it?

Oh plenty [laughs]! But superstitions are only as powerful as the mind makes them.

The stuff you went through in your career is well-known. Was there a point that you reached when you came to terms with talking about it?

Yeah, pretty much. It’s never that I didn’t want to talk. Put aside the drugs, the situation I was in was quite perilous, and I had to deal with that first. And you don’t want people around you ‒ people who you have known all your life ‒ involved in that kind of thing. And other than that, I pushed everybody away. When I was going through what I went through, I was very down, a very angry person, and I didn’t feel there was a need for people to see me in that manner; I didn’t think it would do anyone any good ... I wasn’t harming anyone, I was harming myself, and I wanted to deal with it in that way. As long as I wasn’t a harm to society, I thought it was no one else’s business, and that includes my family as well; they were really upset about it at the time. I think they got the message that I got myself into it, I needed to get myself out of it. And the refreshing thing was, I can’t think of one person, when I did get myself out of it, who didn’t want to know me anymore. The best thing was coming back to Australia. With hindsight, I probably should have done that earlier, come back straight away, I’m sorry, blah blah blah. Because this is the best environment for me, for personal health. So that’s one regret ‒ that would’ve originally happened in 2002; I would’ve copped some flak, that’s understandable, that I hid for a period of time rather than doing that straight away.

Looking back on it, how much of it had to do with being in England, and its hothouse mix of soccer and celebrity? Would it have been different, say, if you had taken the chance to go to Italy?

Yeah, could’ve been. There are certain things you can’t keep away from the press in any country, and the thing was in England – and this has always been my attitude, this is why I’ve never really complained about anything – when it’s all going well, and you have that celebrity phase, and you’re on fantastic money, you never hear anyone complain. I certainly didn’t ...

When it goes pear-shaped, and they report on that, I don’t think you’ve got a right, unless there’s something untoward which sometimes happens, to turn around and play poor, little rich boy. You’ve got to go with the good and the bad. England is a very special environment in the way they treat their footballers. In the rest of the world, they are superstars as well, in Spain or Italy, but the element of the personal life is a little more intense in England.

I loved my time there and I will return there one day. I wouldn’t be sitting here and talking to you today if it wasn’t for what England did for me. I’ll always be appreciative of that. It was unfortunate what happened; there will be a little bit more to that in the future, I can’t speak of everything about it right now. But a few things have come out which sort of confirmed my suspicions at the time, but if I’d spoken about them, people would go, “What’s he on about, anyway? We don’t believe a word he’s saying because he’s all over the shop.”