Pale, drawn and visibly trembling as he read from a carefully prepared statement, Lee Hughes came across yesterday as a man traumatised by his three years in prison and the enormous burden on his conscience. But, as he pleaded for the opportunity to try to pick up the pieces of his life at Oldham Athletic, the 31-year-old nodded in grim recognition that he was not the victim of the fateful events of November 23, 2003.

As the one-time £5 million centre forward sprinted away from his £100,000 Mercedes after a collision on a country lane in Warwickshire that night, the driver of the other vehicle, Douglas Graham, had already died. Graham’s wife, Maureen, died 13 months later of what her family called a “broken heart”. Another passenger, Albert Frisby, was seriously injured and cannot walk without the aid of a stick. Upon hearing of Hughes’s release from HMP Featherstone and immediate reentry to employment at Oldham, Frisby was quoted as saying that he felt “sick to the stomach”.

Those facts kept coming to mind yesterday every time one looked at Hughes and saw a shell of the man once idolised by supporters of West Bromwich Albion and Coventry City. He appeared contrite, saying that he spent every day of his sentence “hating myself” and wishing he could turn back the clock. But he cannot and is acutely aware that, as he began training with Oldham yesterday afternoon in the hope of reviving a once-flourishing career, many will neither forget his actions nor forgive them.

Hughes stumbled through the statement, in which he revealed that he had met Sharon Montgomery, Graham’s daughter, “in going some way to facing my responsibilities”. “For different reasons,” he said, “I think we were both glad that the meeting occurred. This is the first time I have been able to make a public apology for my actions and I now hope for an opportunity to rebuild my life.”

In the brief question-and-answer session that followed, Hughes was protected from certain questions by Alan Hardy, the Oldham chief executive, and declined to answer others, particularly with reference to his time in prison, an experience that has clearly left scars. But he accepted that, whatever his suffering and the impact upon his family, in particular his wife and young daughters, he was not the victim of his actions.

“I am so remorseful and I have to live with what I have done for the rest of my life,” he said. “I keep saying sorry, but I know that’s not good enough. I wish I could turn back the clock, but I can’t. I’ve let my family down. I’ve been away from my children for three years. Football isn’t the most important thing. It’s people’s lives, people’s injuries.”

Hughes was asked whether he thought he deserves a second chance and whether, by returning to the public eye, he was making life even harder for the families of his victims. “I did think about what would be best, if I should or shouldn’t go back to football,” he said. “It’s going to be difficult, but I have to live with that.” So do Oldham, a self-styled family club who now stand accused of letting ambition override their moral obligations. The Coca-Cola League One club were far from alone, though, in bidding for Hughes’s services and have not enticed him with riches – his reported £1,800-a-week salary at Boundary Park is less than a tenth of what he earned at the peak of his powers with West Bromwich – but by making him feel wanted, having pursued him vigorously since Simon Blitz, their chairman, first floated the idea during a board meeting in January.

Nevertheless, it will not sit easily with some that Hughes was able to walk straight back into work so soon after his release from prison on August 20. Opposition supporters and players, he accepts, will be quick to pass judgment, but that is not what weighs most heavily on his mind. “What happened will be with me for every day of my life,” he said. “Every day I think about what I have done. I know what people will say, but this is my job. If I was a roofer [as he was before joining West Bromwich from Kidderminster Harriers in 1997] or a tiler, I would be going back to my job. I just have to play football. It’s my job.”