Rotherham United have right man behind the wheel in hard-working Matt Taylor

Paul Warne embodied what they stood for during that whole period; honesty, pluckyness, getting the best out of themselves, willingness to have a go, and ultimately, working damn hard.

If they are the traits Millers fans admired most from the old gaffer then as first impressions go, the new man at the Rotherham United helm has similar attributes.

Matt Taylor found himself on football’s scrap-heap as a teenager when he was told by numerous clubs that he wasn’t good enough to be a professional footballer.

He refused to take the hint and just worked harder, not only at his game, but in his studies as well.

The young man from Chorley did a degree at Sheffield Hallam University before finally making it as a professional footballer, maximising what he describes as an ‘average’ playing career at a host of clubs, Halifax, Guiseley and Bradford among them.

Because of the journey he had been on just to reach that level, he had seen the end coming long before it did, so began preparing for it early with a masters in sports coaching.

“My route into football gave me a different perspective,” he says. “I was released by clubs at 16, 17 for whatever reason and it meant I had to go into the non-league system which toughens you up a little bit.

“I’ve worked various jobs alongside that as well, part-time and full-time, with the belief that I was good enough to make it as a professional footballer.

“But in terms of a coaching career I was always ahead of the game, because I knew what I wanted to go into.

“As I was playing I was generally in a leadership role either as captain or vice-captain, so I was in a position of leading players and leading men and ultimately that’s what management is.”

Having served his apprenticeship on the coaching staff at Exeter, his big break came in 2018 at the age of 36.

“Sometimes you need a bit of luck in football, Paul Tisdale the manager moved onto MK Dons, and I was in the right place at the right time as first-team coach,” he says.

"I could have gone with Paul but decided to stay and take the job at Exeter and it’s been an incredible learning experience.

"Everyone thinks they can manage until they actually sit in the hotseat, pick a team and stand on that touchline.

“But I’ve had a good grounding at Exeter. That’s given me a belief I’ve got what it takes to manage at the next level.”

The ties he has to Exeter are obvious, the debt he feels he owes them for the chance they gave him, runs deep. It wasn’t just a job down on the south coast for the Lancastrian, it was his life; he and his wife had just started a family.

Rotherham’s advances were not taken lightly. It had to be the right opportunity.

“It was a huge decision, a difficult decision, my heart was saying stay with the club I’d worked so hard for for such a long time,” he says.

"We worked our socks off to get them out of League Two and into League One and then I only saw them play at that level 11 times. But this is Championship level and no disrespect to Exeter there’s always going to be a bandwidth at that club, there’s always going to be a certain ceiling where you can’t achieve too much more.

"We’ve left that club in the best position we possibly can but the aims and ambitions of Rotherham United, alongside the playing personnel, alongside some fantastic work that’s been done previously – we want to join that journey.”

Respect for the club he has left was a common theme at Taylor’s unveiling, as was the situation he comes into at Rotherham, an upwardly mobile club when so often a manager goes in to fight fires.

Given the job Warne had done over such a long period at the New York Stadium, did it add any trepidation about his own ability to build on that?

“I fall back on my experience at Exeter,” he answered. "Paul Tisdale was there for 12 years with fantastic success. We’d just been beaten in the play-off final by Coventry so it had been a successful year.

“So following someone after 12 years and then following someone after six years, you have to take it into account, of course you do. But you’ve just got to understand the foundation is there. Every manager will tell you going into a new club it’s like straight after a car crash, you’ve got to get that car moving again. How big a crash, how big an engine failure is dependent on what’s happened previously. Right now this car is functioning, you’ve seen that on the football pitch. So as much as it was daunting in some respects, it was exciting as well.”

First impressions are Rotherham United have a good man behind the wheel.