Jermaine Johnson grins when he mentions the name Liam Palmer.
Sitting at his home in Jamaica, speaking to The Star via video call, he laughs when asked what a young Liam Palmer was like.
Their paths crossed at different ends of their Wednesday careers; Johnson left the club in 2014 when Palmer had just enjoyed his first foray into regular senior football. They remain pals.
At the time of Johnson’s interview, the pair had shared messages just a day or two earlier when the now 44-year-old spotted a social media image of Palmer dressed in a Jamaica shirt.
Some 12 years his senior, lively attacker Johnson was one of the senior Wednesday players to take the Worksop lad under his wing in those early days of Gary Megson pre-seasons and cross-city promotion scraps. It was a lively changing room of big characters, but Johnson remembers that Palmer held his own after stepping into first team football with Wednesday on arrival back from a successful loan stint with Tranmere Rovers. One of Palmer’s passions back then remains today, it seems – a passion for fashion.
“Liam Palmer? Wow,” he chuckled warmly. “This guy is a very humble guy but boy he was a shopper! He always needed to look fresh – when Liam came to training every day it was different sneakers, different stuff on, always fresh! But he was always humble and always quiet and respectful to others. A really good guy. The best.
“He was good. He was just a kid but nobody was surprised he could do what he could do. He was not afraid of anything or anyone, in training he was playing like he was a big guy. He was good to me and me to him, I was a mentor to him I think. I think he had family from Jamaica so I wanted to be a sort of mentor to him.”
Palmer will take the field as the centre of attention on Saturday as Wednesday welcome La Liga outfit CD Leganes to Hillsborough for the final step of their pre-season friendly preparations. The match will act as his testimonial and will celebrate a career that has seen him key to some of the most remarkable moments in the club’s history, from the touch that kept the Hillsborough Miracle alive to lifting the League One trophy and scoring at Sunderland in May to help cap a historic survival mission.
He signed a new deal to remain at the club he grew up supporting in the weeks after that Stadium of Light win to continue his ambition of climbing the all-time appearance maker list at S6. He currently sits eighth. Johnson, retired from football due to the after-effects of an incident that threatened his life in 2020, still watches Wednesday matches and has been following the career of his old mate with a keen eye.
He said: “When I saw the thing about him signing a new deal it was a pleasure for me because he was there so long ago with me and he is still doing his thing at the club. Sheffield people don’t care about who you are, but you have to go and cut it. He has done that for years, it is so pleasing for me to see him doing his thing. He deserves his time, he has been a good player for so long now. I wish him love.”