The Star were among those welcomed to watch the opening section of Dave Challinor’s first training session as Sheffield Wednesday boss. Alex Miller reports.

The sun splintered through the trees at Middlewood Road and gave the well-manicured grass had just a touch of sparkle. The air was crisp enough to witness the warmth of breath and at the heart of proceedings stood a group of men getting to know one another with smiles on faces.

Blessed with the right editing expertise and a jaunty backing track, you could have cut together a montage half-decent enough for an uplifting American movie in which Sheffield Wednesday’s hiring of Dave Challinor and staff is the turning point to rootin’-tootin’, against-all-odds glory. Think ‘Eye of the Tiger’ with cheesy, mid-press-up close-ups of sweat falling from foreheads.

Welcomed in to watch the first exchanges of a first training session of this new era, what immediately strikes is the delivery of coaches Tony Sweeney and Clint Hill; loud, direct and clear in what they expect. Conversations around the pair’s partnership with new boss Challinor suggest this is a unit of ‘winners’, straight-talking hard workers who go about things with a set of demands they expect to be met at all times. There’s an authority to it.

Even in a first session of first impressions and with outside eyes watching, Sweeney bellows to his players that the passing drill is ‘too slow’, that he wants ‘match intensity always’ and that there will be certain things asked of individuals ‘at this football club’. The likes of Matt Hamshaw and Andy Holdsworth are present but the first drill is primarily led by Sweeney and then Hill in a session that certainly carries an atmosphere of introductory curiosity.

It is no SAS camp of course and the balance between carrot and stick was evident throughout. Challinor, watching the bulk of the session on from the sidelines, sidles up to Yan Valery for a moment’s frivolity and places an arm around his shoulder. Occasionally having to pause in memory of a name, Hill shares a lighter moment with senior men between the changing of drills and Sweeney shares a moment of chuckle with Davis Keillor-Dunn. Consultant Aaron Briggs watches on alongside brand director Oscar Chamberlain and a chinwag is had with Challinor.

Those edging back from injury continued to do so and will aid the cause of a bright start to the new regime. Di’Shon Bernard, George Brown, Jordi Liongola and Louie Barry all played at least some part in what we were invited to witness, while Joe Lumley undertook some handling drills but was not seen leaping around on his troublesome ribs.

It’s funny where your mind can sometimes go. There’s a scene in Armando Iannucci’s classic 00s comedy The Thick of it in which the sacking and replacing of an all-seeing party spin doctor is celebrated by fictional minister Peter Mannion MP. The previous figure had been idealistic and well-meaning but his style of delivery was received to be confusing and unclear.

His replacement, blessed with a nickname we cannot print but rhymes with ‘The Ducker’, arrives to a reputation of sweary authority and with a no-nonsense approach Mannion excitedly suggests will see the leadership of the party go from ‘Nicey-nicey to smashy-testes’.

Again, an embellishment. There is no suggestion Challinor and co are pugilist leaders and if they were, 20 minutes at the start of a training session would be no time to interpret them as such. But what is clear is that the demands will be made clear and the standards they expect will have to be kept to.

Perhaps Wednesday have needed a touch of that.