TWENTY one years ago Bobbie Goulding was on the top of the world as Saints’ linchpin and leader during the tumultuous 1996 double winning season.

The pugnacious number seven strutted around the park with a smile on his face during those heady first days of summer Super League, pulling the strings, barking the orders, putting runners through gaps and, of course, launching the precision bombs.

Now aged 45, Goulding is out of rugby league but he has retained his spikiness and competitive spirit and has now turned his hand to getting a fitness centre off the ground.

He set up Bobbie Goulding’s Fitness and Training Centre, based at the Alexandra Business Park on Prescot Road, in November after initially running boot camps from his own home.

And he has big plans, with a mission to get people in the town that adopted him fit, active and happy.

But he is also driven by more personal goals — namely to make his family proud after in his words “putting them through hell” during the years he was drinking.

Speaking as he surveys his new project, with the jerseys from a pro playing career that started at 16 adorning the walls, Goulding said: “I am focusing on my family. I put them through hell – we all know the script.

“I want to make up. I brought four kids into this world and want them to look at their dad and be proud because three of them didn’t see me winning cups at Wembley.

“I want to provide for my family and just be a good person, that’s all.”

Goulding packed in drinking in 2012 after crashing his car into a tree, sustaining a punctured lung, fractured shoulder and broken ribs.

Having been given a second chance, Goulding is grabbing it with both hands.

He said: “This should have happened the minute I finished playing, but with the troubles I had it was put on the back burner.

“I had to change my lifestyle or I was going to die.

“I had to change my life — there is something that makes you go one way or the other.

“Thankfully I chose the right way.

“Life is good, mate, if you give it a chance.”

He has turned his fitness classes and training into a full time job, starting a 6.15am and still being around at 8.30 in the evening. But it is more than a job — he is on a mission.

And so far he has thrown the door open to individuals and to sports teams, with junior rugby league teams from Blackbrook and Thatto Heath attending sessions, along with West Park rugby union boys and Bold Miners footballers.

The centre is running plenty of courses – boot camps, PT sessions, Zumba, boxing fitness and squad sessions with plenty attending purely through word of mouth or social media, but Goulding wants to reach out to the community.

“It is fantastic being around different people and seeing their lives benefit, watching them get fit with smiles on their faces.

“If you remember when I was Saints captain I was always smiling on the field and my personality was always bubbly and that is what I bring to the gym.

“St Helens changed my life, ok I was winning things at Wigan, Leeds and Widnes before, but this town changed me.

“They took me to their hearts and I took the town to mine.

“I will always be the fans’ captain, I want to give something back.

“I want to get the word out there; to ex-servicemen who are down in the dumps, people who have no confidence, or who are overweight.

“You get down here and let’s smash it.

“Fitness is the same as drinking, you either want to do it or you don’t. If you want to do it, you will do it; that is life.

“In my life now I have to simplify everything and you can’t get any more simple than making your own choice and not leaving it someone else, because that’s where you get in to trouble.

“I am an AA member, it keeps me safe and grounded. That has given me the chance to do this.

“Have your destiny in your hands, that is how I feel.

“I was gone. I should have been dead out of that crash. I wasn’t and so I am not wasting this second chance. Being nearly dead makes you wake up.”

And the competitive spirit that drove him on as player is still with him – and he has big ambitions for the small acorns he is planting in the shadow of the old Pilkington head offices on Prescot Road.

“I have always been a competitor and I want to be the best – I want to be Dave Whelan, I want to Duncan Bannatyne or Mr Gymbug. I want to be the best.

“I have got a platform here and love what I am doing,” he said.

Goulding enjoyed a glittering career as a player, making 495 senior appearances - 480 of those in the top division, from the age of 16.

He added: “I won my first Challenge Cup at Wigan at 18, first title at 17, by 19 I had won two Challenge Cups and two league titles and represented my country five times.

“I captained every club bar Wigan.”

His pinnacle arguably came during his five-year stint at Saints skippering them to the double in 1996, winning the league and cup for the first time in 20 years.

He left in 1998, joining Huddersfield and then shorter spells at Wakefield, Salford, Leigh and Rochdale where he began his coaching career.

He subsequently took the reins of the French national team in 2009 and in 2014 had a short spell as boss of Barrow, even donning his boots again for three matches.

Goulding said: “I loved it at Barrow, but it kind of summed my career up in three games. Magnificent in the first game where nothing goes wrong and I set up a couple of tries.

“The second game was ok and the third game I got sent off and I was on my way to the disciplinary. I think they still have my VIP parking there!”

But since then there has been no job offers from the world of rugby league and now he has stopped waiting for the phone to ring and looked for a different avenue.

“For me to move on - I had to cut ties with the rugby which was hard for me because it has been a part of my life since I was born.

“I was always waiting for that coaching job, waiting for something to happen.

“I will hold my hand up and say I didn’t help myself at times and can look at myself in the mirror and say that now, I couldn’t then.

“I had a bee in my bonnet. I have still got that in me but I can handle it now.

“There’s a devil on the left and an angel on the right and I prefer to go to the right at the minute,” he said.

Anyone interested in signing up to Bobbie Goulding’s fitness classes can make contact via Facebook, Bobbieg777@hotmail.com