The true Barry Bannan moment and a false Dejphon Chansiri rumour - a day to savour for Sheffield Wednesday
A fierce, fun and full-of-fire Sheffield Wednesday claimed three points away at Portsmouth to provide vital respite from the madness. Alex Miller was at Fratton Park.
The Wednesday players turned from their celebrations with their travelling support and grinned wide grins on their way back over the pitch, towards the press box and down into the Fratton Park changing rooms. Frankly, many did so with the sort of gait more commonly associated with those wandering from a post-work six-a-side than those of professional athletes; exhausted, hobbling but happy. A convivial collection of conquering crampees.
This is a side that has had everything go against them for months on end. And they’ve just kept keeping on. The results have gone against them, but aside from some social media side-swiping following that draining Bristol City defeat, the almost universal gratitude has been that they’ve stuck at it. A trip to Portsea is these days seen as what’s described in the business as ‘a bloody nightmare’, and yet they out-scrapped, out-played and out-manoeuvred their hosts to the point of furious post-match summation from their talented young manager.
A glance at social media on the long route homewards saw clips of skipper Barry Bannan swazzing his free-kick over the wall and past an admiring Ben Killip with all the appropriate praise for a moment of such quality. But it was a moment much later that typified the spirit of this battling Owls changing room, a desperate, against-all-sense charge-down that saw the Scot race to charge Killip down as fast and as far as his little Airdrie legs could scamper. It was the 90th minute.
The cold fact of the matter is that these days prove to be rare this season. A glorious win against an under-par side doesn’t do much to absolve the club of the circumstances it has been placed in from on high. But after a week that heard conversations begin to bubble around where the win was next coming from, it provided a much-needed emotional boost for all around the place. And three points away (¡Olé! ¡Olé!).
It was fun. The youngsters rose to the challenge, Ernie Weaver battling Colby Bishop with all the heart and enthusiasm he showed in that Carabao Cup mini-run and George Brown scoring his first senior goal with a calmness that would suggest it was his 100th. As so proudly regaled by Henrik Pedersen post-match, the senior men around them rallied and protected like proud but increasingly exhausted uncles. They out-did Pompey on just about every meaningful metric.
Off the field the Wednesday support left the shell-shocked and subdued spirit of last weekend to once again plunge into defiance, quite literally leaving the rainy storms of South Yorkshire behind in favour of the southern away day sunshine. A glance into the far end looked more Hull City in hue than anything Wednesday, but the now customary 10th-minute protest sing-along was very Wednesday indeed. Reports online had suggested Dejphon Chansiri would attend the match. He didn’t and everyone seemed a little confused as to where that idea had come from.
That Bannan’s free-kick spun past Killip just moments after yet another heartfelt and emotional show of solidarity by an opposition support felt somehow cruel and fabulous all at once, his desperate sprint back the length of the field to celebrate with his public an instantly iconic moment. The Owls skipper has looked a frustrated figure at times in the early stages of what promises to be a brutal campaign, but wandering past his manager’s media duties after the match, he bore the cheeky image of a man content.
“It is one thing to be a good footballer, but it is another thing to be a good leader and Barry showed both today,” Pedersen said. “To score this goal is fantastic, but you also saw him make a 50-metre sprint at the end. He does it all for the team and he was a good mirror for the team. When it was difficult you could look at Barry and get that mirror back. ‘He believes he can do anything - so can I.’ I was happy with this.”
Though Pedersen has sought to speak only of positives in his media gambits and the insistence has been that all in the inner sanctum have simply been keeping on keeping on, you can only imagine what such an afternoon has done for a changing room that to that point had put so much effort in for such little reward. Their Danish coach joked that he rather fancied a beer on the way back; what odds a heavy lifting of stress in his mind behind the stoic, public-facing stream of positivity?
Those afternoons may well prove to be rare. Wednesday’s task remains a gruesome uphill crawl. But if a football team were to be rewarded for sheer effort and bloody-mindedness, this one won’t be waiting long for their next win. It was an afternoon to be savoured.