Sibbit the wanderer delighted to be back among company of Wolves

For one Warrington player in Saturday's Challenge Cup tie against Bradford at Wilderspool, it has been an eventful two years since he last started a season with the club. Ian Sibbit is back with the Wolves after being head-hunted by one of the leading clubs in Australia's National Rugby League, the Melbourne Storm, and has come home determined to put his experience there to good use.

Sibbit enjoyed a remarkable rise from the sort of obscurity that saw his name spelt incorrectly on his Warrington shirt to become one of Britain's rare exports to the most demanding rugby competition in the world.

He was spotted by the Storm's then chief executive, Chris Johns, running in a hat-trick against St Helens midway through the 2001 season and, along with Wakefield's Keith Mason, was given a chance that he could scarcely have dreamed of when he made the Warrington first team as a back-row forward converted into an emergency centre.

It didn't quite work out for him; after just one season, he is back home. "A new coach came in and it was his decision that I could go," he says.

"It was disappointing that it was only one year, but I'm pleased with what I achieved out there. I played in 20 first-grade games, although I only started three of them, but I learned so much, as a person as well as a player.

"It was my first time away from home. It was a great experience, learning from players like Stephen Kearney, and I grew up a lot as well."

A lifeline was not long in coming his way, with the recently-appointed Warrington coach, Paul Cullen, straight on the phone to Australia.

"As soon as he got in touch, I had no doubts about coming back. I was very keen to link up with Paul again. He was my coach in the reserve team at Warrington. I learnt a lot from him then and I think he should have got the head coach's job when Darryl Van de Velde left," he says.

He has returned, still at the tender age of 22, to find a very different club from the one he left 18 months ago.

"There aren't even that many players still here, although they've brought one or two old faces like me back," he says. "I think they've got a really good coaching system in place now. The training is a lot more intense and it's aimed at instilling a winning attitude."

There is also, he finds, a different tone around the place. After several years of shouting the odds before the start of every season, with declarations of intent that have never been fulfilled, the Wolves have been quiet this close-season.

"We're just getting on with it, not coming out saying that we're going to do this and we're going to do that," he says. It's a low-key approach with which he and his team-mates seem a lot more comfortable.

Sibbit hopes to get a chance in the role in which he feels most comfortable this season. Although he got his Warrington break-through as a centre, he sees himself primarily as a second-rower – and that is the position in which he got most of his game time with Melbourne.

In his first outing on his second coming to Wilderspool, however, he played centre, inside the club's new Australian winger, Brent Grose, against whom he played in the NRL.

The partnership looked distinctly useful in the friendly against the London Broncos, with Grose scoring a hat-trick of tries. "I don't really claim the credit for them, because they were all scored coming inside, but we seemed to have a pretty good understanding," Sibbit says.

Armed with his Australian experience, Sibbit has set himself the target of making the Lancashire team this season and then has international ambitions. Like Mason and the Sydney Roosters' Adrian Morley, he is a British player who knows exactly what it is all about Down Under.

"I don't think we're that far behind," he says. "I think St Helens will beat the Roosters next week [in the World Club Challenge], especially as they've got home advantage – although Adrian Morley will feel at home."

And so, after a slightly less elevated experience of the game in the two countries, does Ian Sibbit.