Penalty revelations, song disgust and feeling ‘cansado’ - Half an hour with Sheffield Wednesday’s Callum Paterson

He’s in a virtual press conference with local media at Middlewood Road training ground, completed over Zoom. He wears the air of a man relaxed and content.

For a bloke who can sometimes be jokingly referred to by his teammates as the Wednesday player most prone to moodswings, it seems we’ve got him at an excellent time.

“Some people just want to take penalties,” he said. “I’m not bothered. I can do it, I strike it well and I can hit the ball wherever you want but some people enjoy taking penalties. I just see it as part and parcel of the game.”

He says it all with a grin. His successful spotkick in Tuesday evening’s wrestled Carabao Cup win over Stockport County was - incredibly - the first he has ever taken in an eight-year senior career involving its fair share of shootouts.

It’s a passage of conversation you feel is typical of Paterson the personality. Pressers down the years have revealed him to be laid back, affable, happy to muck in with answers to some of the more-run-of-the-mill questions we ask and happy to allow teammates to take the limelight while he goes about his day.

In some ways it’s a trait that reflects in his football - though opposition players would argue how relaxed he is on the field when racing towards a 50/50 or in a footrace for the ball. They may even show the bruises to prove their point.

His has been a curious mission in over three years at Hillsborough. Brought in as a forward by Garry Monk, Tony Pulis then publicly joked that he was ‘never a striker’ and under Darren Moore he played here, there and everywhere. “Just goalkeeper to go,” he quips.

Now, under Xisco, he’s had conversations detailing the idea he’ll likely play most of his football at right-back. He’s had more appearances there than any other, he said, and is happy there.

In a squad full of big personalities he is clearly one and has taken on a role in integrating the vast swathes of new faces into the fold. He learnt a little sign language last year - Paterson is known to be a very intelligent fella, by the way - in between trips to the river for YouTube fishing expeditions he says allows him to decompress from the stresses of football.

He might well lean on that sign language with some of the new faces that have wandered into S6, with a rich Caledonian accent proving to be a bit of a barrier for arrivals from Chile, Spain, Holland and Colombia.

“Yeah, they struggle with me and Baz,” he joked, suggesting that of the thre words he’s learned in Spanish is ‘cansado’, the word for ‘tired’, picked up in what was a gruelling pre-season. “Us Scots can’t communicate with them as well as others, we talk too fast and they can’t understand us most of the time.

“They’re good lads, they’ve all fit in well, their English is getting better and they’re starting to get around the lads so things are going well.

“It’s good to learn different things and different cultures and stuff. And it’s nice to help someone who is trying to learn a different language as well. It’s been good to have them in, new faces, new cultures. It’s refreshing. We’re enjoying it.”

The days of night-long drinking sessions designed to integrate new players are long lost in the memories of the 1990s of course. But with the likes of Paterson knocking about, new rights of initiation are at play and are fiercely enforced.

After a summer influx that saw Reece James and Ben Heneghan given standing ovations for their respective renditions of Stand By Me and Ain’t No Mountain High Enough in 2022, the burly Scot offered a look of disgust when asked how the class of 23 had performed.

“We’ve not had their first first team meal yet but let me tell you, they’ll all be getting up to sing another song,” he said.

“They’ve been horrific. The standard is usually quite high. Musa (Anthony Musaba) did a little dance which was good and went down well, but there’s been no Despacito, Bambo never did Mambo Number Five, they’ve chosen random songs nobody has ever heard of. Horrific.”

The call ends and he’s off. It was a fun half-hour.