Sheffield Wednesday stalwart honoured by ‘special’ achievement after new milestone

The Owls stalwart made his 434th outing in Wednesday colours on Saturday as he played a pivotal part in their vital 3-0 win over West Bromwich Albion, going joint eighth on the club’s list of all-time appearance-makers.

Palmer went level with the great Johnny Fantham, a legend of the 1950s and 1960s at Hillsborough, as he continued his climb up the ranks, and if he features against Sunderland on Saturday then he will go eighth outright.

“The number keeps creeping up!” he said with a smile when chatting to The Star. “Being top eight is crazy to me, to see my name on that list. Hopefully there are many more to come… So many of those names are before my time, they’re ones that I’ve read about and things, and it’s different in the modern era. You look at Baz's recent milestone, and he’s done it a lot quicker than me - he’s played an incredible amount of games.

“It’s rare, it’s few and far between, and for me it’s something that makes it that bit more special I think. When I do come to finish it’ll be something that I look back on as a great achievement, and to be amongst those other names is really special to me.”

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His current contract is up in the summer, but ‘Palms’ has made no secret of the fact that he’d love to stay and continue to play his part for his boyhood club, and there are a few more names to catch if he does.

He’s still some way off the likes of Andrew Wilson (546), Jack Brown (507) and Alan Finney (504), but reaching the levels of Kevin Pressman (478), Tommy Crawshaw (465), Redfern Froggatt (458) and Don Megson (442) isn’t beyond the realms of possibility if he does stick around – first up, though, is helping achieve the point that Wednesday need on Saturday to stay in the division they worked so hard to get back to.