A FAMILY spent Valentine's Day grieving for a relative who took his own life two years ago yesterday.

For the Hargreaves family of Linden Crescent, Darwen, the day will always bring back painful memories of 24-year-old Wayne.

Now the family are calling for more people to be aware of suicide tendencies in young men. Wayne's sister Claire, 27, said: "Wayne was a great lad but he was always very angry. He had a bad childhood and it stayed with him forever.

"Then he broke up with his girlfriend, who he'd been with for a few months, and just couldn't come to terms with it so it he hanged himself."

Claire was one of the first in the family to find out what had happened to her brother while he lived in Welshpool.

She said: "It was heartbreaking. I had to do things like cancel the phone and the gas, all little things that meant so much."

Wayne, an ardent Rovers fan, left three sisters, brother Gavin, and mother, Margaret Campion, all devastated by his death.

Claire was six months pregnant at the time of Wayne's death and named her son Andrew -- Wayne's middle name -- in his honour.

Mother, Margaret, 47, said: "It doesn't get any easier with time, it gets worse. It's so difficult to grieve and try to be strong for the other kids at the same time."

His other sister, Mel, 29, said: "The pain never goes away. We want more people to be aware of young men's emotions because all too often they are expected to bottle things up whereas it's all right for women to be emotional"

Wayne was born in Catterick, Yorkshire, and grew up in Accrington where he attended Moorhead High School and played footbal. In his late teens he played for Park Lane Rangers in Blackburn.

Mel, a mother-of-two said: "He was an excellent football player and he had a great future ahead of him. Football, women and beer, that was our Wayne.

"He loved to live life in the fast lane and he always liked to look his best.

"When he played for a team in Wales, the Montgomery Boys, he was the star and they used to call him 'the one-man band.' He brought the team from the bottom to the top in one season."

Claire said: "His ashes were scattered at Ewood Park. He would sometimes walk from Accrington to Ewood Park if he didn't have enough money for bus fare, that's how passionate he was about Rovers."

The family, who moved to Darwen in 1989, have different ways of coping with their grief. Claire said: "I've just started going to a suicide bereavement group.

"If we could save just one life by making more men aware of these things, then Wayne's death won't have happened in vain."

Samaritans statistics show that out of 5,986 suicides across the UK in 2000, 75 per cent were male.

At least two men under the age of 25 take their own life every day across the UK.

The Samaritans can be contacted on 0845 7909090.