A RETURN to action on the pitch and a return to where he's spent most of his 16-plus years as a professional - the pages of the national press.

Paul Gascoigne can rank himself as undoubtedly the most famous footballer, if not sportsman, to emerge from Gateshead.

Competition from that part of Tyneside may not be the stiffest in the shape of players like Steve Stone and Neil Aspin, but even if he had been born within earshot of Bow bells, Gazza would arguably still be the biggest sporting name in his home town.

His start for Everton against Blackburn on Saturday didn't produce the column inches it may have five years ago, but it did coincide with his most revealing interview for years - well since the last one anyway!

The most revealing of interviews revealed that Gascoigne was an alcoholic - never!

What it did reveal was a more thoughtful footballer who appears to have accepted that many of his problems are of his own making.

The 34-year-old former Newcastle United and Middlesbrough man is coming to the end of an illustrious career.

But the desire to perform at the highest level in the Premiership still burns deep inside, along with the need to justify the faith shown in him by Walter Smith.

He started his Everton career - after his free transfer from Boro - with a string of super performances.

The shell of a player who departed from the Riverside had been rejuvenated into a player who appeared to be knocking on England's door

There then followed a string of injuries which sent him spiralling into depression and the drinking excesses that have been chronicled over the years.

He reached his lowest point in the spring and admitted: "If I wasn't playing, I would drink Saturdays, then Sunday, then Monday.

"Then I would try and train and it was no good, then have another drink just to pass the day away.

"I just wanted the next day to come then I wanted that one to pass. It was a horrible cycle. I felt so close to having to pack the game in."

Again it was the intervention of Everton manager Smith which forced him to accept help and in the summer he headed to the Cottonwood clinic in Tucson, Arizona, for treatment for alcoholism and depression.

His return to the Everton team for his first Premiership start for ten months was hardly a miraculous comeback, but for any real lovers of the sport it will be welcomed.

With only a year left on his contract, Gascoigne again expressed his desire to become a manager one day - a fact which may raise a few eyebrows.

"I do want to be a manager one day," he said. "It might be ten years, I don't know when. I have my thoughts on the ways I think football should be played but I'll take some advice from Walter Smith, Terry Venables and Brian Clough."

For the moment his return is welcomed and for now his priority is playing for Everton.

His next real test will arrive with his next injury - that will be a true measure of his new found character and resolve.