Charity man: Dave Edwards on life away from Wolves - "It's my duty to help"

"It's my duty to help and give back, definitely. I'd love to get to a point where I literally just did charity work. What a great life to have."

David Edwards isn't your average footballer. In fact, in terms of unsparing generosity and an endearingly positive outlook on life, he's not your average human being.

Most people probably know him as a footballer for Wolverhampton Wanderers and Wales.

Most people probably don't know that he runs an indoor soft play centre for children in Shrewsbury, or that he's about to launch a charity aimed at helping youngsters with learning difficulties.

Footballers are generally considered to be disconnected with the real world. Selfish, aloof, untouchable, arrogant and greedy, certainly at the top level.

While Samir Nasri gets himself into all kinds of trouble on Twitter with the Drip Doctors and Roberto Firmino prepares for a date in court on a Christmas Eve drink driving charge, Edwards is worrying about whether there's enough room at his Little Rascals children's nursery to cater for increasing demand.

Yes, he's the exception to the rule (although he believes footballers get an unjust bad reputation from the media).

We sit down for coffee at Little Rascals – a bright and busy space where kids can run around, play and shout, a lot, to their heart's content – to discuss Edwards' life away from Molineux, where he's enjoying one of the best spells of his career (five goals in eight games and a new two-and-a-half year contract in the bag).

With Wolves, Wales, a family and a burgeoning media career to keep him busy, what has made him want to take on a huge new venture in Little Rascals?

"I have so much to give back to the community," Edwards said. "Both Shrewsbury and now Wolverhampton, they've given me so much.

"I'm lucky to be in a position to do that.

"There's just not enough out there for people. We come across stories that are heartbreaking. You can't help everyone but if you can change one little girl or boy's life...to be in a position to do that, anyone would do it."

Little Rascals the play centre has been up and running for about a year, with great success.

Now Edwards is launching the Little Rascals Foundation – a charity to help children with autism and learning difficulties.

It's a noble and honourable concept. Yes there are charities up and down the country, in every town and city.

But most of the people who run them aren't being paid thousands of pounds a week to kick a ball around a field.

I put it to Edwards that he's not like most footballers.

"I wouldn't say I'm particularly different," he replies.

"Footballers get bad press because of the money they earn, especially at Premier League level. But you don't really see a lot of the good stuff they do away from the pitch, which wouldn't get much coverage compared to whether they want £300,000 a week instead of £200,000 a week."

What do his team-mates think of his charity exploits?

"A lot of them will think I'm mad!" he jokes.

"If people ask me about it I'll talk about it. I'll never go out of my way to bring it up but you do get lads interested in it.

"The big turning point for me came when I got some serious injuries in my 20s. It gave me a different outlook on life after football and I started looking into doing different things.

"A lot of players do get blinded by concentrating 100 per cent on football. I concentrate 100 per cent when I'm at football and I live a good healthy life away from it so as not harm that at all, but I also focus my energies into different things.

"You change as you get older.

"A footballer aged 22 or 23 – it's all about sleep. You go to bed at 1am or 2am, lie in until half 8 and go to training. I was the same.

"But I've flipped the other way completely now – I'm in bed by 10pm! And I'm up really early to have some time to myself before the kids wake up.

"If anyone asks if I watched I'm a Celebrity or anything like that I say 'no I was in bed'!

"Football's a bizarre world. There are so many different personalities."

The image of footballers going out drinking to excess every weekend is an antiquated one.

A much bigger emphasis on diet, fitness and sports science means that drinking, smoking and drug taking aren't vices that players can indulge in without getting caught.

Edwards says he was never one for doing that anyway.

"Whenever I've been at Wolves, because I live in Shrewsbury and have a close group of school friends, I never really used to do much away from football with my team-mates," he said.

"They all come from different areas so stay in and around Wolverhampton and naturally socialise with each other.

"I was never part of that social group. In that way I've never fitted in too much.

"But I'm certainly not a black sheep or anything. In fact at Wolves believe it or not there's a reading school, the lads read a lot of books and we talk about books we read.

"Five or 10 years ago if you had a book on the coach you'd be ridiculed!

"Everything is starting to shift that way. Footballers are going through a revolution!

"Things change, some things become less uncool. When I was at Shrewsbury if you were eating a salad you would get the mickey taken out of you. You should have been having chocolate and a beer.

"Now, if you're in the canteen at Wolves and you have a couple of extra slices of bread, the lads will look at you like 'what are you doing, what about your body fats?'.

"Eating sweets is now the odd thing to do. Ten years ago it's unheard of to have a reading school at the back of the bus."

You only have to see Edwards celebrate a goal, or trudge down the tunnel after a hard-hitting defeat, to know how much playing for Wolves and Wales means to him.

But, aged 30, he's mindful that it will all come to an end one day in the not-too-distant future.

In recent years he's begun to make plans for life beyond football. And charity work is likely to be at the heart of whatever he does next.

In fact it's at the heart of most of his spare time now. He and his childhood best pal Ben Wootton, whose background is in care work, have big plans for the future.

He explains what's behind expanding Little Rascals to become a charity as well as a nursery.

"When we first set up Little Rascals we had a list of our goals for 2016 and me and Ben, we always said we want to provide something back to the community," Edwards said.

"We thought it'd be really nice with the sensory room we've got here that we could create a foundation that will hopefully see people use Little Rascals as a facility, use the sensory room and have dedicated time to be here.

"We hold special mornings on a Saturday at the moment but that's not enough.

"We're open to the general public for the rest of the week and for a lot of children with autism or learning difficulties it can be a bit intimidating being in this space when it's busy and noisy.

"So with the new charity we want to provide a service here and also raise money for people to apply for funding. If there's specialist equipment they might need, a holiday, an operation, anything that will make the child's and their family's lives a bit easier.

"It's been hard to set the charity up but once we've got through the paperwork we're ready to go."

It's a family affair at Little Rascals – with both Edwards' and Ben's mothers involved as well as other family members.

Edwards will often pop in after training to see how things are, or maybe even join in with the tidying up.

And he speaks regularly to Ben about how they will take the business and the charity forward.

"I couldn't leave the place alone at first, I was here all the time cleaning dirty tables, being a bit of a control freak. It runs a lot more smoothly now, we're a year in, so we concentrate more on the admin side of things.

"My mum's happy, I promised her something to take her away from being a chef at the cafe...although she's constantly crying at the moment, she gets very emotional with cases she hears about.

"We're hoping to launch the charity in April with an event at Shrewsbury Town's stadium.

"It'll be completely non profit – there'll be just enough to cover staffing costs. Everything else will be given back to families in need.

"There are so many different avenues we're looking at. Some of it will be 'make a wish'-type things, there'll be a service here where people can use our facilities and in the long run we want to open other centres as well.

"The grand plan is a purpose-built centre solely for the foundation.

"That would be magnificent. Some children will never get to experience a facility like Little Rascals. If we have a purpose-built facility that would be amazing. We think children from miles away would visit.

"There just aren't the facilities for children with autism to go and spend time at.

"They go on day trips, maybe to a park or a cinema or bowling, but it's difficult to take children with learning disabilities to places like that because it's quite unpredictable, you don't know the mood they might be in, or what reaction the surroundings will cause.

"A purpose-built facility would see us tailor the atmosphere to them."

With the Little Rascals nursery almost being outgrown now, an expansion of the business might be on the cards in the future.

It's certainly occupying plenty of Edwards' spare time.

"Any spare time we have we're doing this," he said.

"Ben's great with the business and the numbers and he's got a background in the industry. I'm enjoying finding out how it all works on that side. I'm learning as I go.

"We speak every day for an hour, often just about how things are going but also about our dreams for the future. We get carried away a lot!

"Ever since I suffered bad injuries I wanted to make sure I was OK after football.

"I'd love to get to a point where I literally just did charity work. What a great life to have. And have that feelgood feeling of helping people."

As well as being a professional footballer and running Little Rascals – not to mention spending time with his wife and two young children – Edwards can now regularly be seen popping up on Sky Sports News, or giving his views on BBC Radio Wales.

It's another avenue to explore as he prepares for his future when he's hung up his boots.

"I always wanted to try it. And once I tried it I loved it. Commentating on radio, Sky Sports, BBC Wales, I do really enjoy it.

"It'd be nice to do something in that in the future too. I've got a few different options and avenues...the more the better.

"I'm not going to quietly retire! I've got pretty busy in the past few years. But before then I'd just fill my time watching a box set or a movie or play computer games."

Edwards has publicly stated that he may fancy football management – especially at boyhood club Shrewsbury.

With so many fingers in so many pies, where on earth does he see himself in 10 years' time?

"I often think about it," he replies.

"I'm not sure about football yet with coaching and management.

"I'll have to see if I miss football when I finish. I'd never rule management out. I'll do my coaching badges – I think I'll miss football and the worst scenario to be in would be if someone asked me to be a manager and I wasn't in a position to say yes.

"So I'll do my badges just in case.

"At the moment I'm enjoying the Little Rascals side of things too much not to carry on with it.

"From a selfish point of view I'd like to have a couple of business interests where I don't have to work 9-5 every day to make sure it works, so I can oversee it.

"And then spend a portion of my time doing charity stuff. I'd be very blessed if I managed to get to that."

Visit www.uklittlerascals.com or follow Little Rascals on Twitter @uklittlerascals

The Little Rascals Foundation will officially launch in April.