Why goal machine Paul Mullin feels so at home as a Rotherham United player

Paul Mullin already has a love affair with AESSEAL New York Stadium.

"I've had a great feeling when I've played there in the past for opposition teams," says Rotherham United's new boy. "I scored there for Wigan Athletic last season.

"When I walked in on the day I signed, there was an instant excitement for me. Hopefully, the fans have now got excited about the new season and can try to get behind the lads, I know it's been difficult for everyone for the last few years. This year, hopefully we can turn it around."

The striker is here to help the Millers forget a trio of miserable campaigns and help spark a revival now that they found themselves down in League Two for the first time in well over a decade.

His presence is a real coup for the club who had 198 reasons for wanting to bring him to South Yorkshire. That's how many times the Scouser has hit the back of the net in a memorable career during which he has become the most feared lower-league marksman of recent times.

"I've had three promotions in my last three seasons in League Two and managed to score goals in two of those," he says. "I've been around it for a long time. I know it well."

His tally was seven in 29 games for Tranmere Rovers in 2018/19 , then 34 in 50 for Cambridge United in 20/21 and 26 in 43 for Wrexham in 2023/24.

Mullin put pen to paper on a two-year deal on July 29, rejecting offers from other teams to become Rotherham's seventh summer arrival, and wants those three promotions to become four.

"We need everybody to be together, we need the fans to be with us," he says. "The players have to inspire them with our performances on the pitch and give them a reason to turn up. Results are one thing, but showing that we're willing to fight every single week to give them the best weekends we can after they've spent their hard-earned money is important as well."

We're speaking 48 hours after the signing announcement. It's a Friday afternoon and he's back with his family in Liverpool on a day off, yet he's accommodating enough to agree to an online chat.

It's fair to say, the vast majority of supporters are rather pleased that Mullin is a Miller.

"Yeah," he grins. "It's extra motivation to go and show the them that they should be excited, to make sure that I'm the best I can be. It's obviously a lovely thing to be welcomed so much and to feel at home. After being on loan last year, I needed to find a new home and I feel like I have done that in Rotherham."

The centre-forward is a Wrexham legend after his 115 goals in 167 matches saw the Welsh outfit leap from non-league to the Championship, but he began to fall from favour in the 2024/25 campaign and then spent last term on temporary spells with Wigan and Bradford City.

Club and player came to a mutual agreement in June about the final year of his contract at the Racecourse Ground and he's glad to be putting down roots again.

"It's brilliant to have a permanent home again," he says. I'm one of those people who, if I'm doing something, ties to be 'all in' on it. That's difficult when you're out on loan.

"In the early parts of last season, I had the Wrexham manager ringing me telling me that I might be back in January. As much as you try to be 'all in' at a loan club, it's hard when you're hearing things like that. To now find somewhere that I can call a home and be able to just get on with playing is something I'm grateful for.

"I've missed some of pre-season but I've kept myself fit and I'm in really good shape. The deal probably came about two weeks/a week and a half ago and it just took time to get everything and everyone together. Now I can join the group and just get as sharp as I can in time for the first few games. It's game time more than anything that I want."

The 31-year-old has done plenty of interviews over the years, particularly in those Hollywood-tinged seasons with the Robins, and is sure and practised in his answers. He's also warm and open as he delivers them and I find myself liking him.

Circumstance has given him a rounded perspective and he knows what's important and what isn't. He dotes on his seven-year-old son, Albi, who has autism, and builds his life around caring for him. That's why he'll be basing himself in Rotherham but making trips back to Merseyside whenever his Millers schedule allows it.

The talks turn again to his affection for New York. "I've scored there for Wrexham as well," he recollects. "It's always a great place for me to play."

'Do your prefer one up top or two be in a two?' I ask the attacker and he immediately becomes a team player.

"That's not up to me, that's up to the manager," he says. "I like to try to score, that's about it! But winning is the most important thing to me. Whatever the manager asks of me or any of the other lads, we'll be expected to do it.

"I'll be one of those players who's trying to make sure that everybody's doing as we're asked and we're performing to our best. If the manager decides that it's a one up front, then so be it and I'll do my best at that. If it's a two, then I'll do my best at that and, equally, whoever's next to me will be doing their best too."

Mullin fields questions about Wrexham with good grace. He must be sick of them, having spent so much time as one of the leading men in Ryan Reynolds' and Rob McElhenney's blockbuster of a script, but you'd never know it.

How Rotherham supporters will be hoping he still had that kind of form in him as the former Huddersfield Town youngster enters his 13th campaign as a pro.

"I never really ever thought about all the goals," he says. "I'd been scoring for Cambridge before that, so the run went on for quite a few years. I always had the feeling from the first season of 'Don't let people say it was one season'. Then, after the next, it was 'Don't let people say it's a two-year purple patch'.

"It's all about winning for me. The reason why I'll remember for the rest of my life the season when I got nearly 50 goals isn't because of how many I scored but because we got promoted (from the National League).

"It's just about not stopping. I'm never satisfied with anything achieved. One win's good, but the next one's got to be even better. That's just the way I live.

To be honest. I didn't stop to take stock of how mad it was at Wrexham. It was my life, it was every single day. I went there to play football and everything else happened because I'd done quite well at that.

"It was an unbelievable time. For a side to get promoted three times in a row like that has never happened before. They way we did it, especially with all the attention that came with it, was brilliant. Now it's about a new challenge at Rotherham. Hopefully, Rotherham can get after them and try to catch Wrexham. As much as I love them, it'd be nice to maybe play against them one day."

He comes on to the Zoom call trying to apply a background on his screen because he's lying on his bed and doesn't think that's an appropriate look. However, he can't figure out how to do it so it so I can exclusively reveal that he and partner Mollie have a very stylish cream padded headboard.

Two quiet years in a row are two too many for a driven player and he's shutting out the doubters who claim his best days are behind him.

"I'll be honest, I don't feel like I've got anything to prove to anybody," he says. "I've never felt that way. It's never been about proving anybody else wrong, it's about proving myself right. I've managed to do that numerous times and this time around I want to prove myself right again.

"Whether stats are good or bad, you can twist them to make them whatever you want. I started seven league games for Wigan and scored five goals. That sounds good. Throw in the substitute appearances - I can't remember how many exactly - and it doesn't sound quite as good.

"I'm looking forward to getting back out on the pitch, if selected, and doing what I've always done for most of my career - score some goals and enjoy my football."

He hasn't quite finished waxing lyrical about the stadium he can now call home.

"I played at New York as a young lad for Morecambe - it was in a cup match," he reminisces. "It's just a place I've always, for some reason, had a nice feeling about."

As a 21-year-old, he was on the pitch for the first 63 minutes on a Tuesday night in early August 2016 as Rotherham, then in the Championship under Alan Stubbs, did battle with League Two visitors in the League Cup.

A goal fest brought a 5-4 final scoreline after extra time.

Of course he loves the place. Mullin and Morecambe won.