Jose Baxter was once hailed as the next Wayne Rooney.
The comparisons were obvious when he was breaking through Everton's academy. He, like Rooney, was a local lad and played in an aggressive and attractive style.
But the comparisons would not last long. Unlike Rooney, who forged a successful career right at the very top of the game, Baxter would go on to fail a drugs test, tumble down the leagues and ultimately retire before the age of 30.
He has now opened up about the moment he failed his first drugs test. He was at Sheffield United at the time.
Speaking to the Leg It podcast, Baxter said: "I’d never taken a drug in my life, never been drug tested in my life, so I had half a tablet, and come Monday, it was my first ever drug test, and I obviously failed it.
“When they walked in I knew. I had this warm, horrible feeling.
“I did the drugs test, and it’s a weird one because you don’t get the results for three to four weeks, so if it happens, they then do a second test to make sure.
“So in the meantime, you’re thinking ‘I’m alright here’, and then bang; the news.
“Looking back I wish I’d just been honest. I said I’d been spiked and they probably heard that story a million times before.
“And then the second time when I didn’t take a drug, it was like ‘well we let you off with the first one, we’re going to slap you with the second’.”
Baxter was suspended by the Blades in May 2015, with the FA handing him a five-month suspension in July that year.
The timing of that ban, three months of which were suspended, allowed him to begin playing again at the start of the 2015-16 campaign but Baxter was to be suspended again in February 2016. He was subsequently released by the South Yorkshire club.
He failed a second drugs test in August 2016 and was banned for a year, missing the entire 2016-17 season.
He went on to get an unexpected lifeline when boyhood club Everton handed him a contract, but only featured for their under-23s side.
He would go on to represent the likes of Oldham and Plymouth before heading to America where he played for Memphis 901. He retired in August, aged just 29.
