Ask most of us who fill pages for a living and all we really want is a line.

Something that makes a headline, gets your attention. Fills the back page.

And in that regard Leigh Griffiths has frequently been a generous and affable benefactor.

Bubbly, chatty, funny and willing to deviate from the sanitised soundbite, his often colourful opinions have long endeared him to those of us who write and those of you who watch.

For many journalists who sat in the press box last June as Griffiths sunk two goals in quick succession beyond the reach of England’s Joe Hart, the player is responsible for delivering one of the highlights of our own career journey.

Brendan Rodgers, who offers a mantra of respect and courtesy, has admitted before to tearing his hair out over some of Griffiths’ antics; tying scarves around goalposts or wiping his nose on a flag isn’t the kind of behaviour that would ever endear the striker to his manager.

But there was a paternal element to Rodgers as he described Griffiths as a “little rogue.” It would have been easier for the club to cut ties with the player rather than offer him a new four year deal a few months back given that it has been something of an open secret in football circles that Griffiths has been struggling for some time.

The news that came this week regarding the player seeking professional help for various problems has long been looming. It just wasn’t expected the day before arguably the club’s biggest game of the season.

Rodgers was right in much of what he said; the outside view that the financial trappings of a successful footballer should inoculate them from the day-to-day pressures of life is myopic and ill-founded.

But there is something behind that too. Footballers are different.

They are reared differently; the boy who stands out at primary school, who gets the homework pass, the time away from the books. The teenager whose future effortlessly makes him the cool kid in the gang. The guy who always gets the girl.

On the surface, it all comes easily. Underneath the surface, maybe not so much.

Dressing rooms are unforgiving. The environment is one of pressure and pressure in particularly formative years.

But in an era when salaries at the very top level sound like something from monopoly money and players have time on their hands and access to gambling sites at the touch of a phone, there is always a willing out for anyone’s internal demons.

And the damage they can wreck is difficult to ascertain.

Michael Owen lost £60k at the back of a bus on a card school. Wayne Rooney blew £500k on two hours on a solitary casino stint in the wee small hours. Former Chelsea player Eidur Gudjohnsen found refuge in gambling following a long-term injury; he ended up owing £6m to various banks. If access to gambling is easy, so is the credit required to fund it.

The Scottish government has pioneered a move in recent years to educate people about ACE’s; adverse childhood experiences. These are events which underpin entirely the foundation of our adult temperament.

The formative years and what we are exposed to, the level of nurturing, the receptiveness to an infant’s needs mould malleable brains. How we will cope with stress and pressure and adversity are all set in our earliest experiences and what we live through.

None of us know or appreciate the triggers that can bring someone to where they find themselves needing the intervention of professional help. And nor should we.

Griffiths deserves his privacy now.

At 28, his career on a football pitch might be at its peak years. But in the real world he is a young man with a whole lot of life ahead of him. The adulation that comes to him on a pitch will dissipate once that career comes to a close and it is then where we have so often seen players who have coped hit the buffers; Paul Gascoigne is just one who springs to mind.

Griffiths has the blessing of his club now to escape from the daily struggles he has laboured with. It is an opportunity to walk a different path.

The least he deserves now is the chance to do so without further prying eyes.