Rotherham’s Paul Warne hails fairytale ride with Diss as his lucky break

By Chris Dunlavy
Ripped off on his paper round. Threatened by his own team-mate. Drunk in Magaluf, Soho and Diss town centre. Paul Warne may now be one of the EFL’s longest-serving managers but the Rotherham United boss will always be a “Non-Leaguer” at heart.
An FA Vase winner at Diss Town and a prolific wideman for Wroxham, the 46-year-old was 23 before he got his big break with Wigan Athletic.  He would go on to spend 15 years in the professional ranks, winning two promotions with Rotherham and netting 34 goals in 292 games over two legendary spells at Millmoor.
Here, he tells The NLP  – in his own inimitable style – how he went from earning £6 delivering the Daily Mail to living his boyhood dream.

As a teenager in his native Norfolk, Warne was spotted by Paul Tong, the assistant manager at Great Yarmouth.
“As a kid I played for North Walsham, the town I grew up in. When I was about 15, Paul saw me on a Sunday morning and invited me to play on a Saturday afternoon for Great Yarmouth. Unfortunately, I had a £6-a-week evening paper round at the time. I told them I couldn’t afford to quit my round and they said ‘OK, we’ll give you £20 per game’.
“It was about 1988 and that was an absolute fortune to me. All I needed was someone to cover my round on a Saturday. I was paid £1-a-day and the lad I asked robbed me for £1.50. I was devastated. That was my first financial lesson about negotiating! I played for Great Yarmouth for a year, then the manager – Bill Punton, who used to play on the wing for Newcastle – left for Diss Town. I went with him and ended up spending about six years there.”
In 1994, Diss, then of the Southern Premier Division, beat Atherton Laburnum Rovers over three games to reach the FA Vase final at Wembley. Trailing Taunton from the 12th minute, the Tangies scored an equalising penalty in the final minute pf injury time before Peter Mendham volleyed home an an extra-time winner.
“I was at university then, living the dream. About a stone heavier. I remember running down the wing in extra-time and I got cramp – at full pace – in both hamstrings and my groin at the same time. It was like snipers had got me from three different corners of the ground. It was turmoil!

“We went straight out in London that night. Me and my two best mates at the time didn’t get back to the hotel before the bus left the next morning. Luckily, the wife of one of the players had packed our stuff. The manager wasn’t best pleased but he couldn’t really be in a bad mood, could he? We made it back for the open-top bus, didn’t sleep, drank again.
“We got back to Diss and everyone was on the streets welcoming back the team. It was my 21st birthday. The crowds sang happy birthday to me. My mum was crying. It was the best weekend and I’ll never forget it. Amazing.”
In 1996, Warne joined Eastern Counties Premier rivals Wroxham. 
“After the Vase final, I played another season at Diss. I’d just graduated from uni when Wroxham came in. I’d been at Diss so long I just felt like I needed the change. Not that I played much at first. I’d been sent off at the end of the previous season for shouting at a linesman and got a six-week ban, which is unbelievable considering I only ever got sent off about twice in my whole career. The punishments in Non-League were crazy in those days.
“Anyway, I ended up playing the whole season for Wroxham and didn’t lose a game which I’m still very proud of. It was a great footballing side. I scored loads of goals, though I had loads of chances. I probably should have scored double. The real bit of fortune for me was that Wroxham was the best-paying Non-League club in Norfolk at the time. When a lot of Norwich players retired, that was their natural fall.
“The crowds were quite good, the area was affluent, the owner was rich – lots of dodgy little envelopes and all that. Dickie Upson – father of Matt – was club secretary and his house was dead opposite the gates. If you ever got there early and it was locked, you’d give him a knock and he’d open up. Matthew used to train with us pre-season and I’m sure that’s what made him the player he became.
“The year before I got there, they had John Deehan, who used to play up front for Aston Villa and Norwich. He left to take the Wigan job and we sort of met in a swinging door. Bruce Cunningham, the manager, kindly phoned up John and said ‘Come and have a look at this kid, he’s scored loads of goals’.”
Deehan listened, and in the summer of 1997 brought his Division Three outfit to Brewers Green Lane for a preseason friendly.
“It must have been six hours on a bus, so you can imagine how popular I was in that dressing room! Meanwhile, I’d been in Magaluf for two weeks with my mates. Drank too much, obviously. First half, I scored, though we were losing 2-1. Then, at half-time, one of their coaches came in and said ‘Right, get that young man in our dressing room’. I was sitting there going ‘No, gaffer, I don’t want to do it’.
“I wasn’t that confident, and I’m still not really. I was saying ‘Look, just let me stay on this side. If it happens, it happens, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t’. Finally, a lad called Mark Crow, a big centre-half who used to play at Norwich, said ‘Look, Warney, f***ing get in there now or I’ll knock you out’. I went in and all their lads are looking at me. I felt like a right a******e. I’ve got the wrong kit on, I’m really self conscious.
“John Deehan was a lovely bloke. Soft spoken, never swore. He said ‘How are you doing?’ and I said ‘Alright, cheers pal’. All their lads are giggling because I didn’t call him gaffer. Then he asked if I was OK to play. I’ve got social tourettes at the best of times but especially when I’m nervous. I said ‘Yeah, I will be, but the thing is I’ve just spent two weeks in Magaluf and I’m still sweating Budweiser’. On and on, spouting rubbish. Those Wigan boys were like ‘Who the hell is this guy?’.”
Warne eventually got the right kit on and put in a suspiciously flawless display for the Latics.
“I’ll always remember the first header I went for, Crowie is going up with me shouting ‘You’ve got it, you’ve got it’. He wasn’t even challenging me. It was a complete stitch-up. I scored for Wigan and looked unbelievable. They were ploughing into every other Wigan player and I was like Moses parting the Red Sea. I came off the pitch completely embarrassed.
“I went in for a drink after the game and I had no expectations. What I thought would happen is what happens to a lot of young lads where they go ‘We really like you, we’ve got your contact details, we’ll keep an eye on you, all the best for this season, yabber, yabber’.
I went to the bar, which is great at Non-League clubs. They always put decent food on because they want you to stay. The chilli at Wroxham was great, more salt than mince so you had to keep drinking. I’m tucking in when Bruce came up and said John Deehan and his assistant John Benson – who was the hardest man I ever met in football – wanted to see me outside.
“When they said ‘We want to offer you a contract’, I was absolutely dumbstruck. Even though I was 22-23, it was a Roy of the Rovers moment. All I wanted to do was tell my parents. I remember saying to them ‘Don’t judge me by that second half because the lads were helping me out’. They just laughed at me. I was buzzing.”
Warne then completed his move to Springfield Park, where he scored four goals in 56 league games before joining Rotherham in January 1999.
“John Deehan phoned me the next day and said ‘Can you start this week?’. I told him I couldn’t because I was running a coaching company at the time. Looking back now as a manager, it’s crazy. If I signed a player and he told me ‘Nah, maybe next Monday’, I’d be like ‘Are you for f***ing real?’. But John was so laidback. He said ‘That’s no problem, we’ll offer you £25,000-a-year for two years. I thought that was amazing.
“I didn’t have an agent or anything but I knew about signing-on fees so I just said ‘Can you give me some money for a car?’. That was an extra £15,000. Brilliant! What I hadn’t thought of was the tax implications. I didn’t realise the £15,000 signing on fee would come over three periods, and that tax would knock the five grand down to three.
“Then I had to rent a house. At the time I was a tenant with my now wife – she was my landlady – paying £300-a-month all in. Suddenly I was paying £450 to rent a garage which was an absolute s***hole and pay for all my electricity, gas, the lot. I was actually much worse off as a professional footballer. It was surreal but that was my way in and I’ve obviously got no regrets. I loved every step of that journey.”