The incredible Barry Bannan story that happened when he was just nine | OneFootball

The Sheffield Wednesday legend was first spotted showing off the sort of skills that would serve him well throughout his professional career.

The way in which the Sheffield Wednesday captain Barry Bannan was first discovered speaks volumes about the player's confidence in his own abilities.

The rebirth of Sheffield Wednesday has started in a successful fashion. Wednesday kicked off their competitive season with a 1-0 win against Bolton Wanderers in the EFL Cup, and followed that up with a 2-1 win at Leyton Orient to kick-start their League One season.

The financial disasters of 2025-26 meant that the Wednesday first-team squad required significant rebuilding over the summer following their relegation from the Championship, and few of the players to arrive at Hillsborough have generated quite as much excitement as the return of Barry Bannan.

Bannan, who'd been with the club since 2015, left in the January transfer window for Millwall, but following the Lions' failure to reach the Premier League via the Championship play-offs at the end of the season, Bannan returned to Hillsborough in July to spearhead the attempt to get his former club back up from League One at the earliest available opportunity.

Barry Bannan caught the eye from a very early age

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As a player, Barry Bannan has never wanted for confidence, and a story from the very beginning of his time in the game demonstrates that this has been the case since well before he even turned professional.

Bannan first played for a youth team called Lenzie Youth Club, but he first drew attention to himself as a 9-year-old while serving as a ballboy at the Scottish club Albion Rovers. Speaking to the Daily Record in 2010, the former Rovers head of youth development Jimmy Lindsay explained how he first caught the eye.

"We were playing Montrose and the ball fell behind the dugout", Lindsay told them, "and Barry fetched it by flicking it and keeping it up as the big Montrose player ran towards him, but Barry just flicked it over the lad's head and the crowd went wild."

Lindsay recalled how one of his first encounters with the player particularly stuck in his memory. "When I asked Barry he said he wanted to stand next to the dugout so I asked why", he explained, "He said, 'because if it rains I'll get a seat'."

And Lindsay wasn't the only person whose attention was drawn to Bannan: "At half-time in one game I went into the boardroom and our chairman Davie Shanks asked me, 'who's the player?' I thought he meant the trialist and told Davie it was just someone the manager had brought in. But he said, 'no, I was meaning the wee blond guy next to the dugout - he's the best player out there'."

What fans have been saying on social media about Barry Bannan

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The return of the Sheffield Wednesday captain to his former club has provoked a lot of comment over the course of the summer. Here's a small selection of what's been said about Barry Bannan's Hillsborough return.

This Wednesday fan feels that Bannan has definitely got goals in him in League One this season:

Bannan provided a delightful assist for Jamal Lowe to score the only goal of their EFL Cup game against Bolton Wanderers, and this Wednesdayite sees the assist as proof that a Sheffield Wednesday team with Bannan in the midfield will be capable of challenging for a place in the League One top six:

Journalist Dom Howson believes that Bannan's pre-season ambitions for Sheffield Wednesday were just what the club needed as they prepared for their return to League One:

And when Bannan's return to the club was confirmed in July, this fan couldn't wait to see him back at Hillsborough:

Following an unsettled start to his professional career, Barry Bannan found a home at Hillsborough

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The last eleven years have not been an especially happy time to be a supporter of Sheffield Wednesday, but the presence of Barry Bannan in their first-team has made them somewhat more bearable.

Over that time, he's made 479 appearances for them in all competitions, scoring 37 goals and providing 76 assists, and he was their captain when they won promotion from League One through the play-offs in 2023, after having first been appointed into the position by former manager Garry Monk three years earlier.

Figures as of 19-08-2026 from Transfermarkt

Unlike many players who become extremely closely associated with one club, Bannan was a fully-formed professional by the time he arrived at Hillsborough from Crystal Palace at the end of the summer 2015 transfer window.

Bannan, whose own grandfather was a professional in England from 1951 to 1961, moved to Celtic's youth academy in 2002, and two years later he was spotted by Premier League club Aston Villa, making his first-team debut for them in a Europa League match against Hamburger SV in December 2008.

His time at Villa Park was mostly notable for the amount of time elsewhere. Over the five years from his debut, he would only make 82 appearances for them, spending time on loan with Derby County, Blackpool and Leeds United before moving to Crystal Palace in 2013. But he could only manage 27 appearances for Palace over that time, and spent the second half of the 2014-15 on loan at Bolton Wanderers before arriving at Sheffield Wednesday that summer.

Bannan's Hillsborough return could be a sign of better things to come for Sheffield Wednesday

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With almost 500 appearances for the club, Bannan has become a club legend over the eleven years since he first signed for the club, and when he left for Millwall in January 2026 there was a feeling that this departure was a point at which it truly became apparent, the extent to which the club's future was jeopardy. In administration, the club simply couldn't afford his wages.

But salvation was found in the form of a takeover at the very end of last season, and Bannan's return to Sheffield Wednesday might easily be characterised as just as much a sign that things are returning to normal at Hillsborough following the disastrous reign of Dejphon Chansiri.

And with their season having started with two wins, Wednesdayites will be hoping that there might be a second promotion for Bannan from League One waiting at the end of the season. There's work still to do on a squad that only came together over the summer months, but the early signs are quietly encouraging.