ASK any footballer and they will tell you injuries are the worst part of their otherwise enviable occupation.

Treatment, recuperation and rehabilitation can be a painful and frustrating exercise.

Multiply that agony by 10 and you may have some idea of what Paul Weller has been through since being struck down by the kind of illness you wouldn't wish on anybody, let alone a football player in his early twenties trying to establish himself as a success in the Nationwide League.

Put simply, Weller has been to hell and back to revive a career that was only a failed operation away from hitting the buffers.

The Burnley midfielder had already been ill for the best part of a year when he had substantial parts of his large bowel removed just a little under 12 months ago.

Two further operations were required to restore the 24-year-old to full health. And when the rest of the country's footballers were sunning themselves on the beaches of Europe this summer, Weller was starting out again in his battle for full fitness which has taken him to the brink of a first-team return.

Not a pleasant subject to discuss, Weller was completely open about the problems he's endured.

And there wasn't a touch of bitterness in his voice, despite losing a considerable chunk of his burgeoning career.

"I'm lucky. That's life. Everyone's said I've had a hard time but everybody gets ill. Just because you play football you're no different from anyone else," said Weller, who first noticed some discomfort - initially thought to be inflammtion of the bowel - mid-way through Chris Waddle's sole season in charge at Turf Moor.

"The problem started at the Christmas but I played through to the end of the season. It wasn't too bad and they thought it was something that would just go away." It didn't. And a couple of days after helping Burnley avoid the drop in May last year, Weller checked into Burnley General Hospital.

"If anything it got worse and so they took me into hospital and I was in there for 19 days on a drip and it started to clear up."

It was to prove a false dawn, however, and whenever the dosage of steroids he had been put on was reduced, the pain returned.

Things weren't running smoothly in his professional life either and with a contract lying unsigned on new manager Stan Ternent's desk he tried his luck at West Ham.

"I got offered it while I was in hospital," he recalled. "I wanted to get myself sorted out. I had put on so much weight with the steroids and I was unfit but there was nothing happening here so I just went for a week."

His fitness problems obviously didn't help and the Hammers didn't follow up their interest.

Things looked up at Turf Moor as Weller agreed a new three-year deal to extend a Clarets career that started as a trainee before he signed professional forms in November, 1993.

But he continued to be dogged by the illness which turned out to be a growth of ulcers on the bowel.

"I tried to get fit and played two games but the pain was so bad I couldn't go on. I just wanted to get it sorted out. I spoke to the physio and the manager, who was brilliant and just said get it done, whatever it takes. "It got to November and I'd had enough. I couldn't go on with the pain and I was going to the toilet about 20 times a day and losing so much blood.

"I was at home by myself and I would just wake up and sit on the toilet all day long."

Surgery was the only cure with three separate operations required, involving removing some of the bowel, putting in a 'pouch' to perform the same function and then connecting together the new system, with a couple of months recovery time between each.

All the time Weller's career was effectively in the balance, although it's an issue that was never discussed head-on.

"They didn't tell me in so many words. They said if the pouch doesn't heal or anything goes wrong I would have a (colostomy) bag for the rest of my life.

"They said you could still play but it's not something you would want."

And did Weller ever fear the worst and imagine that he would never play again?

"I was just happy to be alive," he admitted. There was support from the hospital staff, praised to the hilt by Weller, his team-mates and girlfriend.

But Weller had to do the hard work himself and six weeks after the final operation he was given the all-clear to resume fitness training in May. "I came back once everyone else had finished. With the steroids my weight had been up and down and even though I'm not the biggest anyway, my legs were tiny. I just had to build them up on the weights and with balance work."

And he loved every minute of it.

"I didn't mind because I was back doing something. For the first time in a year I had to set my alarm and it was great to do that again."

In July he kicked his first ball after persuading the manager to let him play in a warm-up game at Accrington Stanley.

And since then he has gone from strength-to-strength, Ternent describing his performance in a friendly at Bolton last week as his best yet.

The next step is a return to senior action and Weller is getting close, travelling down to Bristol City on Saturday as part of Ternent's first-team squad.

When he does get back it will be a triumph. And promotion would be a fitting way to celebrate.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.