ANGUISHED reminders of how his professional football career ended flooded back at the double for Chris Short this week.

In almost a decade, close on 300 League and cup appearances were racked up by Short for Scarborough, Notts County, Stoke City and Sheffield United.

Yet the all-action defender would surely have doubled that tally and registered the same sort of career longevity as his elder brother Craig - now starring at Blackburn Rovers - but for a mystery debilitating and ultimately career-killing illness.

What he has subsequently missed as a player narrowed into the keenest focus with Sheffield United's luckless FA Cup semi-final defeat to holders Arsenal, followed by today's duel at Old Trafford between Manchester United and Blackburn for which Craig got tickets for his sibling.

The quest to find a cure has been grimly taxing and costly.

Short has travelled half-way around the world, endured countless operations, tests and medical procedures, as well as consulted a phalanx of specialists and doctors - 43 at the last count - and been greeted with as wide-ranging diagnoses as an enlarged heart, magnesium deficiency, over-training syndrome, and various blood disorders.

The highly-rated wing-back paid out £25,000 of his own cash in what has proved an unsuccessful pursuit of the cause of the disease that left him physically riddled with pain.

There has been an even greater price to pay. He admitted that the illness had cost him his career and his marriage.

But self-pity is not in the vocabulary of the man, who is carving out a new career as a fitness instructor at the Next Generation sporting complex which has newly opened in York.

While admitting to being 'gutted' at the premature final whistle to his playing days, Short told the Evening Press he would rather concentrate on the positives to have sprung from the denial of his footballing dream.

He added: "I do miss the banter of the dressing-room where, as a team, you are all in it together.

"But what has happened makes you a stronger person. It's certainly made me stronger. I don't worry about the little things any more.

"You've got to realise that there's always somebody worse off than you. I've not got a life-threatening illness and I'm not disabled or in a wheelchair or anything. It's just that I cannot play professional football anymore."

It was in the year of the Millennium that ironically his playing career was halted. And with even heavier irony, it was during his comeback at Sheffield United, who were then, as now, managed by Neil Warnock, the man who gave Short his senior Football League baptism as a teenager at Scarborough.

Warnock, much slighted by his contemporaries and presently facing a rap from the FA after his comments damning semi-final referee Graham Poll, holds a special place in the affections of Short as he does in most of the players who have been managed by the Blades' boss.

"I'd been paid off by Stoke City in 2000," recalled Short.

"Neil Warnock said to me 'come here (to United) for pre-season and see how it goes'. How many managers would have done that? That's why of all the top bosses I have played for, including Gary Megson and Brian Little, I would walk through a wall for Neil Warnock. That's why I was gutted for him and the Blades this week.

"Anyway, I had a word with both my parents and agreed to give it another shot.

"In the fitness tests I came first in the first few days and got through the first few practice matches. I thought then that maybe I could just do it. But it all started again. I got the pains right down my left hand side and I knew I just could not carry on."

Then aged 30 and his playing days over, he went travelling.

He back-packed through Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii and America before returning to his Yorkshire roots to gain his diploma in physical training at the David Lloyd Centre in Leeds.

After a spell working in Harrogate, where brother Craig lives, Chris moved to York and joined the Next Generation set-up earlier this year.

"This place is brilliant. The facilities are first-class and I did not realise how massive it was until I got here," he enthused.

"The physical training side is very intensive and extensive covering all kinds of issues such as diet, training programmes, injuries, physiology and massage therapy."

The new lease of life he has been afforded could offer a possible route back into the pro' game as a fitness conditioner. It was a possibility the defender, who as a teenager attracted a loan spell from Manchester United, did not rule out, but for now he is concentrating 100 per cent on passing on his new skills to the next generation.

CHRIS SHORT Fact-file

Born: Munster, May 9, 1970.

League appearance/goals record

Scarborough 1988-1991: 43 games, 1 goal.

Manchester United 1990-1991 (on loan): 0 games, 0 goals.

Notts County 1991-1996: 94 games, 2 goals.

Huddersfield Town 1994-1995 (on loan): 6 games, 0 goals.

Sheffield United 1996-1998: 44 games, 0 goals.

Stoke City 1998-2000: 35 games, 0 goals.

Total League outings: 222 games, 3 goals.

Updated: 11:34 Saturday, April 19, 2003