Paul Warne on Millers fans, going up, Jamie Lindsay's loose tongue and what he made of a rare look on Twitter ... the Rotherham United boss's Advertiser column

He just missed out on the signed, framed Alan Shearer shirt that Richie Barker had promised to hand over in return for 25 League One and FA Cup goals this season.

Smudge finished on 20 and knew he had no chance of persuading our assistant manager to include the five that he also bagged in the Papa John’s Trophy.

That’s when the supporters stepped in and raised enough money to buy him a signed Shearer jersey from a sporting-memorabilia company.

In fact, their donations amounted to more than ten times the cost of the shirt and Rotherham Hospice is now in line for a welcome windfall because that’s where the rest of the total is going.

It’s an amazing gesture by supporters and I’d like to give a special mention to Kev Johnson, a home and away regular, who has done all the sorting out.

The Advertiser’s Paul Davis sent me the details of how to donate and I stuck in a few quid myself.

I love stuff like this. It gives you hope in your fan base. It’s beyond decent.

Our support has had some stick for one or two incidents this season but it just goes to show that the ones doing the bad stuff are in a tiny minority.

I bet that the people who have been donating to Smudge’s shirt are the same people who clap the team off and pick them up after a defeat. Good people are just good people.

Smudge is an obsessive Newcastle United fan, which is why Shearer (left), the Magpies’ record scorer, is his idol.

He says to me that when he stops playing he won’t work in football, he’ll just get a season ticket for St James’ Park and also follow his team all around the country.

I’ve told him his life won’t work out like that. He’ll have two kids to provide for by then and will have to work his nuts off.

If I was Smudge and I was given that shirt — it doesn’t matter if it cost £200, £2,000 or £20,000 — I would be absolutely made up. It’s all about the feeling that the fans of Rotherham want him to have his special jersey. It’s just humbling.

It will have pride of place in his home for two reasons: 1) that it’s Shearer’s shirt and 2) that it represents the respect that Millers followers have for him.

It’s quite magical really, a lovely, lovely thing.

I GO into the summer with a beam of optimism, hoping that new characters will bring new joy to the team.

We’ll attack the Championship next season. The quality of the coaches here means that we’ll get everything we can out of the side. We’re very organised behind the scenes.

Hopefully what we do will be enough to accumulate 50 points. If it isn’t, it won’t be for the lack of trying. You can criticise things about my teams but you’ll never be able to criticise their character or desire to do well.

Without doubt, we are going to have to bring in some signings to help us because the present set of players, as good as they are, aren’t a mid-table Championship side. It’s going to be a really busy summer of recruitment.

Why can’t we stay in the Champ? Other clubs like Luton Town have kept progressing and done well. Maybe they’ve spent more money than they did before but they’ve got the rewards.

I don’t want to be a manager who stands by the dugout week in week fighting and struggling for every point I can get, hence why we must recruit well in the next few months.

We’re moving into the fifth-richest league in the world so we’re doing okay, but I don’t want to be in a survival fight from day one. I want to build a team that can be really competitive.

Life at the moment is good. I’m happy where I live, my team have just been promoted and I have a great relationship with the chairman. However, I’m aware my situation could change very quickly if results don’t go our way next term.

What I don’t ever want to do is leave this club with 9,000 people booing me. As soon as I feel there is enough hatred towards me, I’ll not be here.

I remember playing for Ronnie Moore for seven years. He was an unbelievable manager for us and I love him and John Breckin, who was his assistant, for what they did.

Yet I remember the fans turning on him. People were chanting and shouting ... it just wasn’t right.

I don’t want to leave like that. I want to be able to hold my head up high, shake the chairman’s hand and say: “Well, it’s been some ‘crack’, I’ve done everything I can, now it’s somebody else’s turn.”

I don’t think that time is now but I’m sensitive to what people think. I like to think I am a good judge of timing. It will be right when it’s right.

I CAN’T thank the lads and staff enough for what they have done.

From the start of June last year until the end of April this year, it has been 11 months of monumental effort to get ourselves back to the Champ.

The staff have the respect of the players and the players have the respect of the staff.

I know not everyone outside the club agrees with the ‘human’ way in which I manage but that’s how I choose to do it and I won’t ever change.

A promotion and cup double suggests we’ve got a lot of things right this season.

Going to Wembley in the Papa John’s Trophy was great for the fans, but not for me as a manager. You don’t really want a cup final when you’re locked in a promotion battle because the route to Wembley takes a lot of physical and mental energy out of the squad.

The fact that the lads won a cup, then overcame a league wobble to take us into the Championship is testament to the work done by every department of the football club. All 24 players and my ten members of staff deserve credit.

The sense of achievement takes a while to sink in. To be honest, it’s only now that it’s truly hitting me. When the final whistle went at Gillingham and we knew we were up, my only feelings were exhaustion and relief.

I heard a Michael Ihiekwe interview where he said that the group would be glued together forever by this promotion. Icky might phone Michael Smith in 20 years and say: ‘Hey, are you going back to this reunion in Rotherham to celebrate 2022?’

Will Vaulks FaceTimed me to offer his congratulations. Other old boys texted me: Joe Newell, Jon Taylor, Anthony Forde, Revs and a bunch of others.

These are the kind of things from which I take massive pride.

THE bank-holiday weekend was a bit of a milestone for me.

Not because we sealed promotion — although I do admit that did feel pretty good — but because for once I had a look on Twitter.

Normally I avoid social media like the plague because managers can cop for so much abuse on there. However, I felt confident that no-one would be having a pop after our climb back into the Championship.

I found clips of Georgie Kelly’s goal at Gillingham and watched it back about a thousand times. Seeing the whole away end go up as one reminded me of when Jordi Osei-Tutu equalised for us in the last minute of the Papa John’s Trophy Final.

A Rotherham fan had posted a video of the season, which I’m sure a lot of you have seen it. It had clips of me scoring in my playing days, which I buzzed off, and also contained some abusive tweets that were directed at me during this campaign. I buzzed off those a little less.

I read all of them and that sort of tainted my joy a little bit, but the video made me feel alive, because that is how football is: there are bad and good times. Predominantly this season there have been good times.

JAMIE Lindsay nearly talked himself into trouble on the way back from our last-day, promotion-securing victory at Gillingham.

It was a brilliant coach journey during which players and staff mingled and plenty of alcohol was consumed.

The lads went through a crazy drunk spell for a couple of hours when they were singing like lunatics, then they went through a chatty phase where they’d almost forgotten who they were talking to.

Jamie’s tongue was loose and our midfielder told me about a night out the players shouldn’t have had during the season.

Had I known about it at the time, there would have been big trouble. The fact that we’d been promoted only a few hours earlier when I heard about it made it easier for me to forgive them.

When we got back we all had a great night in Wickersley and met a load of great people who had been to the game.

The day after was another amazing time. It was a staff-and-wives afternoon out and we ended up at the Slug and Lettuce in Sheffield city centre.

I even had a dance, which is a bit unlike me. They were playing 90s stuff, which my missus and I love. A pint of confidence and up I went.

I have to say, I do like a bank-holiday Sunday in South Yorkshire. People fully embrace going out early. It’s just not like that back in Norfolk where I’m from.

When we left the pub, it was light outside. I told my mum this story and she thought I’d pulled an all-nighter and had staggered out some time around dawn. I had to tell her that her wild-living son had actually called it a day at about 7pm in the evening.

MANY thanks to the chairman for funding the lads’ trip to Las Vegas.

They flew out last Thursday and came back to South Yorkshire on Monday.

At the same time, I took my staff on a golfing break to Portugal.

The players lead a disciplined life for 11 months of the year — apart from Jamie Lindsay and co’s furtive night out — and a blast at the end of a tough promotion campaign was what they deserved and needed.

When I played for Rotherham, every summer we went away as a group and it was amazing.

It fuelled the camaraderie for the following season.