The 37-year-old striker served three months of a 10-month sentence for affray in connection with an attack on a group of students that left one with a broken jaw in 2012, and he views his time behind bars as a “hard reset” that made him realise he needed to change his “reckless” ways.

He told FourFourTwo magazine: “I would have been dead – if I didn’t go to jail, I would have been dead.

“I was living too recklessly away from football but all things happen for a reason.

“There was a family on the other side, and I never ever want to glorify what I did, there was a victim so I don’t ever want it to come across as that.

“On the flip side, it was like a hard reset for me. I had to sit for 13 weeks in jail and figure out who I was – ‘My dad’s dead now, what’s going to happen?’

“I buried my dad on the Friday and went to jail on the Monday, so I had to figure out what was going on and why I was being like that.

“All while surviving, while not knowing how my career was.

“In jail, all you have is time. You’ve got nothing but time, you’re just sat there.”

Troy hopes he went on to make his loved ones “really proud” of him.

He added: “I remember writing down a list. What am I going to do when I get out of here?

“It was like, ‘I’m going to have a career, I’m going to buy a house, I’m going to buy a car.’

“I was making good money, sure, but I was also going out every week and had a leased car and a rented house.

“Then when you get locked up and stop being paid, it’s like, ‘Oh s***, actually I haven’t got anything.’

“It was the hard reset that I needed and hopefully from that, I’ve made my dad and my grandad, the people who passed away, really proud of me. I certainly hope so.”