"Life would be very boring if we all followed convention,” says Craig Wight, Carlisle United’s new goalkeeping coach, by way of introducing an unusual path. The 40-year-old, appointed last week, came to Brunton Park via Scotland, the USA and Finland and it may be wise for the Blues’ keepers to prepare for interesting times.

Even when describing a “straightforward” route which saw him successfully apply for Carlisle’s vacancy last month, Wight found himself on an eventful road. “I was coaching at Stirling Albion, enjoying myself, a good little club, and I was part time, also coaching independently with AMC Goalkeeping [an academy], filling my time with that,” he says.

“My dad woke up one morning, and it must have been the gap between coffee and reading his book, and came in and said, ‘I see the Carlisle goalie coach has quit’.

“I had a read of the article and thought, well, in for a penny, in for a pound. I sent my CV off – old school, printed it rather than emailed – and Mr [David] Holdsworth [United’s director of football] gave me a phone back.

“Unfortunately at that time my dad took the message and wrote down all the details wrong. I spent two weeks trying to get hold of Mr Holdsworth. I’m phoning the club, nobody would give me a mobile number or an email address, and I thought my chance had gone. But then he phoned and it was all back on.”

Wight agreed terms to the end of the season last week and, as well as being the Blues’ preferred successor to Dan Watson, who left to join Keith Curle at Northampton, the 40-year-old appears one of life’s raconteurs.

This may be a result of what has been far from a conventional career. “I signed for Hibs in 1994, from high school at 16, from there I went to Arbroath, then to college soccer in America, came back, went to Livingston, back to Arbroath, a short bit at Brighton, then East Fife, then I retired for the first time, because I’m an idiot - goalies, we’re all idiots, so no stress on that,” he says.

“Then back to America to coach, then came back and coached for a bit, ended up at Cowdenbeath as player-coach, then out of the blue ended up in Finland coaching women’s goalkeepers - that then turned into coming out of retirement at 37, playing for a team in the fourth division, then joining a team in the Finnish Premier League and being on the bench in the Champions League.

“It’s Roy of the Rovers stuff, isn’t it? You don’t write novels like that. I think my whole thing starts, ‘Once upon a time’. But there’s been no princesses yet.”

It was certainly an unexpected but eye-opening time when Wight found himself at the Finnish top-flight outfit IFK Mariehamn. “I was in an island in an archipelago between Sweden and Finland, it was a Swedish-speaking part of Finland, an autonomous region called the Åland islands,” he says. “Any away trip was a seven or eight-hour ferry journey to the mainland, or a short two-hour hop, depending on what you did.

“Every away trip was leave on Thursday and come back on Tuesday. But I enjoyed it - it was a completely different way of life. They’re very laid back, don’t take anything too stressed.”

In sporting terms, it was also adventurous. “I don’t want to be disrespectful to any league or country but it certainly opened my eyes to how insular we are in the United Kingdom in terms of ‘our football is the best’,” he says.

“With IFK Marihamn, we played Odds BK from Norway. I guarantee probably nobody in this room knows who they are. I didn’t know who they were. But we got shown a video of them the year previously playing in the Europa League and they were 3-0 up against Borussia Dortmund after 15 minutes. You’re watching that going, alright, that’s not a bad standard.

“We then played Legia Warsaw in the Champions League and got absolutely battered home and away. In the away leg they had 75 per cent possession. The following game they played Astana [from Kazakhstan] who were another level again. We watched that game as a team, with a couple of beers, and we had a laugh because Astana had 80 per cent possession.

“We were going, ‘what a night that would have been to have two per cent possession, where your goalie was the only guy who touched the ball!’ It opens your eyes, though. The standard in Europe is ridiculous, the deeper you get into it. I don’t think we give it enough credit in this country.”

Wight also says the standard of Finnish players “blew me away” and says he returned to the UK with a broader mind for all this. “Sometimes it’s easier going off the cuff and accepting what happens to you,” he says. “Finland came out of the blue. A coach up there, I’d went to college with his wife, he messaged me asking if I knew about any goalkeeper coaches. We started talking about the set-up, and I went, ‘That’ll do me, I quite fancy a bit of that’.

“I don’t mind travelling around. It opened up my horizons to new ways of thinking about things. I think if I hadn’t gone there I certainly wouldn’t be standing here in front of you guys today and I wouldn’t be at this club [United].”

Wight says he learned new coaching practices and recommends anyone “gets out of their comfort zone”, should similar opportunities be available. He also credits his younger time, in American College Soccer with Kentucky-based Lindsey Wilson College, and Cumberland University in Tennessee, with fostering diversity of thought.

“We had one American in our entire squad of 25. Instead of having one way of solving a problem, we had 25. It might not be an English or a Scottish way - it might be a Cameroonian way or a Jamaican way. But there will be a way to solve the problem as long as we can all come together as one group. It makes it more rounded and makes you a better human being at the end of the day, which we all want, isn’t it?”

Wight laughs that his eventful journey has equipped him with “a lot of useless information” but a broader mind, while he appears passionate about helping Carlisle’s keepers develop. “I’m a goalkeeping geek – goalkeeping’s what I love,” he says. “I think it’s the best position on the pitch by a long, long way.

“The biggest thing for me is the enjoyment the goalkeepers have here, and that they are willing to communicate what they are looking for. There are two types of goalkeeping coach – you can be outcome-based or process-based.

“Outcome-based is black-and-white – did you save it or did you not? Process-based, you might still not save it, but we can work all the way back to an actual point to say, right, this is what it was. It may take 10 seconds or 10 weeks.”

Wight said he researched John Sheridan’s first-team keepers, Adam Collin and Louis Gray, before meeting United, though accepts the relationship must grow before he feels ready to impose too many new ideas. While he says he will be happy to expand this to involvement with academy players, that will come down to discussions with those in charge, including coach Gavin Skelton, against whom Wight played in Scotland.

“We’ll have to look at that further down the line,” he says. “I’m just in the door and I don’t want to start throwing tables or annoying people. I know what happens when the Scots come down south – you guys don’t tend to like that too much.”

Wight is smiling when he makes these quips and it is plain the Brunton Park coaching room, not to mention training pitch and team coach, will be a lively place for his presence. He says the prospect of full-time coaching led him to apply for Watson’s vacancy and, given his experiences abroad, long weekends on the road with the Blues are hardly a deterrent.

“When I lived in America, anything out of state, or even sometimes in state when I was in Kentucky, you were travelling six hours. So it’s not gonna cause me a problem. A bit of Radio 2 in the car and you’re good to go - Steve Wright in the afternoon and some fun factoids. This one was on Monday: in the state of Utah, it’s illegal to wear a hat in a public event or theatre that obscures the view of someone sitting behind you…”

Carlisle’s players can prepare for more of this en route to Swindon today, as Wight settles into Sheridan’s staff. “My brother sent me a photo [last] Monday night, saying ‘is this your manager’?”

The photo was of United’s boss playing for the Republic of Ireland in the 1994 World Cup. “In the background was [Paolo] Maldini blurred out. Who blurs out Maldini?!”

Wight adds that “positivity”, whether about long trips or anything else United life can throw at him, will be a driver in his work. “It’s very easy on a daily basis to find hundreds of negatives,” he says.

“Someone pulled out in front of me in traffic today. That’s a negative. But I didn’t crash, nothing bad happened, nobody died. You should be as positive as you can, ‘cos positivity breeds positivity.”

As on other themes, Wight is fervent about this. “Go north of the wall and have a look at everybody up there. There’s a lot of negative people in the world, but there’s no need for that. TV pundits and press make a living out of being negative. Why not turn the other way and be positive about every opportunity you’re given?

“This might be my chance, the opportunity. I might never get another one. Why not embrace it and enjoy it for everything it is?”