Wes Brown will make his first appearance as a Sunderland player when Steve Bruce's side play a pre-season friendly at Kilmarnock tonight. Chief Sports Writer Scott Wilson met the former Manchester United man and discovered a defender desperate to make a new start.

ORDINARILY, it is a conversation that any footballer would dread.

You’ve been at the same club for all 15 years of your professional life, making more than 300 senior starts. You’ve won five Premier League titles, two FA Cups and two Champions League winners’ medals, as well as winning 23 caps for your country. But of all a sudden, it all comes crashing to an end.

Called into a meeting in the manager’s office, you are told your services are no longer required. Everything you have known, everything you hold dear is taken away in the blink of an eye. In the vast majority of cases, the sense of disappointment and loss must be crushing.

Yet speak to Sunderland full-back Wes Brown about the moment his Manchester United career effectively came to an end, and the overriding sentiment that emerges is one of “relief”.

Relief that his days as a fringe player are finally over. Relief that his manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, was so open about his intentions. And above all else, relief that the most gut-wrenching decision he would ever have to make was taken out of his hands.

“If I’m being honest, you sort of know what’s coming anyway,” said Brown, who will make his first appearance as a Sunderland player in this evening’s pre-season friendly with Kilmarnock, having missed the recent tour of Germany because of a minor niggle.

“So in a funny kind of way, it’s a bit of a relief when someone like Sir Alex sits you down and tells you how it is. I wasn’t playing last season, so I knew things weren’t really right, and I couldn’t really see myself getting back into the team for this season in any sort of meaningful way.

“You inevitably start questioning what’s going on, so Sir Alex’s decision wasn’t really a surprise. I saw it coming and I think I’d got my head around it. We had a good chat and everything was fine. In a way, I think it meant we could both draw a line under things and move on.”

That moving on meant seeking out new employers, and given his status as one of the most versatile and experienced defenders on the market this summer, it was hardly surprising that Brown was inundated with offers.

Stoke City, Blackburn and West Brom all inquired about his services, but Sunderland’s willingness to strike an early deal that has also seen John O’Shea move to Wearside enabled them to leap to the front of the queue.

For £4m, the Black Cats have acquired a defender who will seamlessly plug the right-back hole that was left by departing loanee Nedum Onuoha.

Spend 15 minutes or so in his company, and it is clear they have also signed a player who retains a burning desire to play football despite the glut of honours he has already assembled.

Some footballers play the game for money, others relentlessly seek fame and exposure. For 31-year-old Brown though, a grounded character raised on the streets of Longsight, Manchester, simply re-experiencing the thrill of a Saturday afternoon is sufficient reward.

“The motivation is simple,” he said. “Playing games. I’ve not really played for two years, so that definitely excites me.

“I’ve missed the buzz of a match day and it’s going to be great to get into the flow of things again. There’s nothing better than when there’s a good pattern in the week and you know that, come the weekend, you’re building yourself up for a game. It gets you settled down and focused and you feel like there’s a real purpose to what you’re doing.

“The alternative is what I had last season, where you’re working all week then you find out at the end that you’re not going to be playing in the game.

“Most of the time, you work as hard as you can all week, then you turn up to the ground on the Saturday and your name’s not on the team sheet. When that keeps happening, it’s hard.”

So instead of another season on the fringe of things at Old Trafford, Brown is set to be a key component of Steve Bruce’s strengthening at the Stadium of Light.

The path from Stretford to Sunderland has been well walked in recent years, whether it’s been managers (Bruce and Roy Keane), permanent signings (Liam Miller, Kieran Richardson, Danny Higginbotham, Phil Bardsley, Dwight Yorke, Fraizer Campbell and now, of course, Brown and O’Shea) or loanees (Danny Simpson, Jonny Evans and Danny Welbeck).

The transition between the clubs should be interpreted as a feather in Sunderland’s cap, and while it was initially a wrench to leave his native North-West, Brown has already seen enough to justify the move.

“You look at how many ex-Man United players have been here,” he said. “And you think, ‘There must be a reason for that’.

“Obviously the two managers know each other, so maybe that’s got something to do with it. But everyone I’ve asked has said it’s a brilliant club. I spoke to people like Dwight and Phil, and they urged me to make the move.

“Since I’ve been here, everything’s been great. I come from an area where there’s been a lot of success, and hopefully I can help bring that here. That’s what we’re all trying to achieve - to move the club forward as quickly as we can.”