Rotherham United v Bury: We will repay fans, vows Will Vaulks

Whether the Rotherham United midfielder is a music lover or not, he will, no doubt, appreciate the symbolism of the stirring lines of: ‘I get knocked down, but I get up again, you are never gonna keep me down’.

Those words sum up his footballing career perhaps better than anything else.

Showing his mettle and handling adversity has gone with the territory during his journey – right from his early days as a teenager at Tranmere when he was sent out on loan to non-league neighbours Cammell Laird to ‘toughen up’, according to then Rovers chief Les Parry.

Vaulks passed that particular character test with flying colours and the manning-up process continued at Workington.

Sadly, it was not enough to secure a future at Tranmere, with the Wirral lad released in 2013 without playing a game before picking up the pieces 235 miles away at cash-strapped Falkirk, with his resolve to earn a deal such that he went without pay in order to earn a long-term contract and kick-start his footballing dream.

In an era when the stories of cossetted, mollycoddled young footballers are plentiful, it provided the perfect antidote.

Vaulks admirably reconstructed his career with the Bairns and earned a six-figure move back to England when the Millers came calling in the summer of 2016. A happy ending? Not quite.

A brutal Championship campaign in 2016-17 scarred everyone at the club. Losing became contagious and although Vaulks appeared 40 times in the league last term, he was on the winning side just five times.

For Vaulks and his team-mates, any bouquets from fans were likely to be laden with barbed-wire.

A new season brings inevitable new hope but for Vaulks, it is another rebuilding job. It is a work in process, but he plainly will not be caught hiding.