What was said in Sheffield Wednesday huddle as Owls look to give fans a 'special afternoon' v Sheffield United
Barry Bannan called his comeback comrades close and for a moment, Carrow Road belonged to Sheffield Wednesday.
It was a few moments after the Owls had capped off their latest episode of routine remarkability, this time a whirlwind 3-2 comeback win over Norwich City started and ended within 12 minutes after a first half that left many wondering whether their season might effectively come to a spiritual close this weekend. It turns out they’re not done yet.
The win sucked the deficit to the play-off places back to five points and with Sheffield United their next opponents at Hillsborough this weekend, there’s a feeling the momentum lost in a bruising run of form at the turn of the year is back. With barely a Norwich City supporter left in the ground, Carrow Road was left for Wednesday to revel in.
Bannan called his teammates in for a huddle before celebrating with the club’s supporters - many of whom will have tallied somewhere close to 20 hours of expensive travel in the last four days.
“I was just listening to my team,” Owls boss Danny Röhl said when asked about the huddle. “It is sometimes good, we have a lot of meetings where I speak, speak, speak. In this situation I was listening. It was that we have a strong mentality, that we are hungry, that we have to be humble and that we create some momentum with the last two games. Now we are looking forward to Sunday.
“We want to give a big thank you to our massive supporters. Two games away in Plymouth and then here? It is not easy. But we give them two lots of three points and on Sunday we want to give them a special afternoon.”
That the win and post-match images come after Wednesday stayed down south for a mini camp away from Sheffield between the two away matches paint a picture of togetherness at S6. The clash with Sheffield United heads into the international break and can create a whole new level of momentum and though Röhl sought to speak in slightly hushed tones over the reality of a play-off tilt reignition, goal-and-assist man Josh Windass suggested back-to-back wins puts them right back in it.
“He said how we've been here four or five days, away from families and stuff,” he told BBC Sheffield on the content of the post-match huddle. “To go and win back to back games is brilliant from morale heading into Sunday and now we're back in a picture we looked out of two weeks ago. That's the Championship.
“When everyone got in a hiss and a fuss two weeks ago when we lost against two top teams and we played pretty average, they said it was all over. But we knew points tally-wise, we needed seven or eight wins from however many games were left and there's two. If we can pick up seven wins - which is obviously very difficult in this division - we'll be in the play-offs.”