Award-winning Sheffield Wednesday man details dire start, his fightback and being a Danny Röhl 'nuisance'

The Wales international has been honoured once again for his incredible commitment to supporting those in need, taking the EFL Championship Player in the Community award for the 2023/24 season. It comes well-deserved for his well-known work with charities such as Bluebell Wood Children's Hospice and The Baton of Hope. It's the first time any player has received the award three times.

On April 14, he'll represent Wednesday in collecting the divisional award at the Houses of Commons and will find out whether or not he's won the overall EFL award. It's a further showcasing of the sort of personality Owls fans have come to expect from a player whose Owls career looked down and out not long ago; a giver off the field, tight and uncompromising on it.

Between an August 12 defeat at Hull City and Xisco Munoz's final game in charge of Wednesday at West Brom on October 3, Vaulks played just 28 minutes of Championship football. After an misjudged clearance attempt at Cardiff City saw him penalised for the handball penalty that gave the Bluebirds a late win, a five-match run saw him sit out September entirely and The Star was told a serious bid to take him away from Hillsborough would have been welcomed in the final days of the summer transfer window.

A few months on his fortunes have turned as steadily as Wednesday's and the 30-year-old battler has started six of their last seven matches. Alongside the likes of Liam Palmer and Michael Ihiekwe, Vaulks has staged a comeback that at stages didn't seem possible. They're battling to ensure the wider group do the same after what he openly described as a 'pretty dire' start.

"Look, we had two points after 10 games," he told The Star when asked whether there was a point he felt the door had closed on Championship survival. "It wasn't a great start was it? But then you still know you've got so long in the season left. But yeah, at that point it wasn't great. You're always going to struggle to get any pro sit there and say 'Yeah, we thought we were getting relegated.' But I can honestly say I'm not sure I did. Along the way we've always had little surges of belief and I don't think we have ever given up.

"The manager (Danny Röhl) has been quite good in that he's kept things quite steady, he's never told us we need to win three out of the next four games or whatever. He just believes in the process that if he was able to come in and improve us as players and what was happening on the pitch then we would win more games than what we had. I can honestly tell you that there's never been a point we looked at it and thought we were down. After 10 games things were obviously pretty dire, but as we saw it can turn around pretty quickly after that."

For a player released by Tranmere Rovers in his youth, who as a youngster made the trip up to Falkirk to play for little more than a quid a week in order to get his career back on track, it's perhaps no surprise Vaulks has been able to elbow his way back into a key role in Wednesday's midfield. He takes pride in being 'a nuisance'.

"It's something that is in my DNA, without sounding like I'm bigging myself up," he said. "Resilience is something I have had to show throughout my career and if you wanted to down tools and throw it all away then I probably would have played three games this year. I could have just chucked it.

"There have been times under this manager that I have been disappointed to come out of the team and if you asked him, he'd probably say that I'm a nuisance that won't go away. It's something I've made a career out of and once that dies out in me I am done as a player. I need that fight.

"I'd like to think I've shown that on the pitch as well and that people can see I'm going out there to win football games and improve the team. You have to have self-belief and I believe in myself. I think I can help this team and this football club."

Offering help is a constant in how Will Vaulks goes about things on and off the pitch. Should he land the overall Community award next month, he'll hope it isn't his last achievement of what has been a whirlwind season.