GUDNI Bergsson - the man who was "discovered" twice - began his long goodbye to the game he has graced with pride and distinction last night.

Click HERE for The Bergsson Years

The Bolton Wanderers captain will hang up his boots at the end of the season, bringing down the curtain on eight glorious years at the club where he thought he might spend "two or maybe three years".

"I was a bit like the 'forgotten man' before I came here," Bergsson recalled, looking back on the Spring on 1995 when Wanderers' boss Bruce Rioch brought him in from the cold.

"I'd been released by Spurs with a bad back injury and was back in Iceland. I was closing in on my 30th birthday and hadn't played a competitive game for almost two years.

"I'm very thankful that Bruce Rioch had the belief in me and wanted to sign me.

"I contemplated having perhaps two, maybe three years when I first came - and now it's extended to eight years. I can only be really thankful that things have gone so well. I've always been offered contracts and, thankfully, I've been fit enough and playing well enough to carry on."

Bergsson was speaking at the launch of a video of his life story - from his childhood in Reykjavik where, as an 11-year-old, he spent his school holidays working in a local fishery to his Premiership days "snuffing out", as his manager Sam Allardyce puts it, the likes of Michael Owen, Robbie Fowler, Robbie Keane and Mark Viduka.

"I never really saw myself as becoming a professional footballer," he admits, "I had a trial with Aston Villa when I was 20 then, of course, later with Spurs."

It was 1988 - the year Miss Iceland, Linda Petursdottir, won the Miss World contest in London. The beauty's agent was a pal of Bergsson's and a chance chat with the agent of Miss Ireland, who was a friend of Spurs' manager, Terry Venables, earned the Valur defender a trial at White Hart Lane.

Thus began a career that has been extended, season-on-season, for the past three years as the Reebok favourite has been persuaded to postpone his transfer to the law career waiting for him in his homeland.

But fans at the video launch at the Reebok Stadium joined his team-mates Mike Whitlow, Dean Holdsworth, Per Frandsen and Jimmy Phillips in a reluctant acceptance that this will be his last season.

'Gudni Boltonsson - The Life of a True Bolton Great' is available at the Wanderers' club shop, priced £12.99. Profits from the video and last night's launch will go to charity, including the Keystone Haven children's hospice appeal, which is aiming to raise £500,000 to provide a fun-packed respite centre for the terminally ill.