‘Get me a horse, I’ll ride into Hillsborough’ – David Stockdale’s final Sheffield Wednesday interview

It may be his last, for all we know. At 37 he’s had a fine career that has spanned numerous divisions and resulted in numerous trophies, but this may be the first time that he’s spent the post-Wembley celebrations donning a Stetson.

For Stockdale the goalkeeper it was a season of two halves – the first where he kept 11 clean sheets in 21 games, and the second where he made just three appearances after seeing Cameron Dawson take his place.

There are no hard feelings about any of that, though. He always said that he wanted to be part of the bigger picture, helping to drive his teammate on if it so happened that he found himself sat on the bench.

“Cam’s done what he’s done, and he’s been excellent,” he told The Star. “So I had to contribute as a person rather than as a player. So that’s what I tried to do… When I signed I told the gaffer that, whether or not I was playing, I wanted to help drive the team to promotion. So I’m just glad it happened.”

So much has happened in his season at Hillsborough, a season that will be his last at S6 after it was confirmed that his contract wouldn’t be renewed, and the memories will last forever.

Maybe none more so than the image of him in his cowboy hat on the victory parade, or of him lifting Barry Bannan like a trophy after the madness of Wembley in the play-off final.

There’s a story behind both of them.

With a grin, ‘Stocko’ explained, “I actually promised Baz that if we went up as champions then I’d ride into Hillsborough on a horse, a white stallion, with a hat on… So if anyone wants to get me a horse then I will ride into Hillsborough on it.

“Regarding that photo, he was the first person that I saw after the final whistle, and I picked him up and actually said, “I effin told you so!” In one of our psychologist meetings I stood up and told people that I’d actually seen him winning it.

“When I arrived I told Lindsey that I’d seen him lifting it at Hillsborough, but sadly that wasn’t meant to be. All the way through we’ve had sessions with Tom Bates that helped us, though, and yeah – in my head I’d seen him lifting a trophy. “

It was redemption, of sorts, for the former Wycombe Wanderers and Brighton & Hove Albion man, who just a year earlier had had to stand by and watch Sunderland lift the very same trophy. He’d made his son do the same.

There were no tears of sadness this season, though.

“I got to go to my son at full time, bench or not, and say, ‘I told you, son’. Last year I made him watch Sunderland lift that trophy, I said, ‘You’ll cry, you’ll be unhappy, but you’ll know that feeling’. I told him to always want for more, and that’s the thing I wanted most.

“After we won it, Barry said to me, ‘Go and tell Billy that you’ve won’. And that was it for me.”

As two of the club’s elder statesmen, Bannan and Stockdale formed a bond of sorts. The shot-stopper says they’d shout and scream at each other in training sometimes, but that all of that was because of their own high standards.

When news of Stockdale’s exit was confirmed, his skipper took to Twitter to say thank you, saying that his arrival ‘was massive not only on the pitch, but off it’.

“Baz knew me,” Stockdale went on to say. “He knew that he could use me both as a person and a captain to drive the team forward – that’s something that makes him a good captain.”

June 30th will mark the end of the latest chapter in Stockdale’s lengthy and fabled career, and as he approaches his 38th birthday there will no doubt be plenty going through his head about what happens next. Where he goes from here.

But for him it’s not always been just about the football. As an advocate for mental health discussions and a man no stranger to charity, he wants to be remembered for more than his contributions between the posts.

As he chopped through the luscious locks of Wednesday’s partnerships manager, James Todd, before donating to Rio Spurr’s fund he gave people another reason to look back at his time at S6 fondly.

In his own farewell statement on social media he said he’ll be back at Hillsborough to ‘watch the club march further on up the leagues’, and you know he’ll stay true to that.

Finishing up his interview with The Star he said, “Somebody tweeted me the other day saying, ‘Once an Owl, always an Owl’, and I believe that. I’d like to think that I’ll leave my shirt, my number, in a better place than I found it.

“The league table will tell you that I did – and I’d like to think that when you ask people about me personally then they’ll remember me more as a good person than a good player.”

“Do you know what this is?” he asks as his kids come and join him on the stairs. “It’s nice.”