Stuart Bannigan has opened up for the first time about his injury nightmare, and admits that he might not leave Partick Thistle in the summer after all.

The midfielder seriously injured his knee at Tynecastle in March, ending his season and it was presumed his Thistle career, after he had previously indicated he would leave Firhill at the end of his current deal.

Now though, Bannigan is uncertain over what his next step will be, and he hasn’t ruled out the possibility of staying with the club should his worst fears over his injury be realised.

“I don’t quite know what’s happening yet in terms of whether I’ll be here next year or not,” he said.

“I think it affects your thinking a wee bit, especially with the way the injury is and the uncertainty around it. It creates an uncertainty around what is happening next season.

“I haven’t signed anything with anybody yet, I’m just waiting to see what path to take and it will depend on how long I am going to be out for.

“If I’m out for a long time you might think you want to stay at a place you’re familiar with - you know the people, you know the staff - and it might be beneficial to do your rehab there.

“If it’s not as bad as imagined then the plan might stay the same, look to get a good move and take it from there.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty at the moment, and I’ll just have to wait and see.”

Whatever happens, Bannigan will always be grateful to manager Alan Archibald and the staff at the club for their treatment of him both before the injury and since.

He also would love to get onto the Firhill pitch again to show his gratitude to the Jags fans who have cheered him on since he broke into the first team.

“They’ve been great with me here, they really have,” he said.

“The manager has known me for a long time, I played with him and he was my reserve manager as well.

“He took me in and said ‘Listen, we’ll sort you out and take care of you if it is bad as first feared’, and I really appreciated that.

“I also know the fans would probably love to see me pull on the Thistle shirt again, but we’ll have to wait and see. That’s a question that can’t be answered at the minute.

“I love pulling on the shirt and I’d love to do it one more time. The fans have been great with me and have always supported me since I came through the youths.

“To end this season that way was very disappointing. I felt I was having a good season, I was playing well, but it is just one of those things."

The most frustrating thing for Bannigan at the moment is the wait to find out the extent of the injury, with a prognosis so far proving elusive despite several scans and visits to a specialist.

He said: “I knew straight away it was going to be a bad one, when it’s not a tackle you always know it’s serious when you fold like that.

“Because I didn’t get stretchered off I thought for a wee second that I might try to run it off, but two steps back onto the pitch I knew that wasn’t going to happen!

“When I was sitting on the bus afterwards that’s when I started to think the worst and was wondering what it could be, but there was a wee bit of hope in that the swelling wasn’t really major.

“I never really thought then that it could have been my last game for Thistle, I was just hoping that it wasn’t too bad.

“They’re not quite sure the extent of how bad it really is. I’ll go and see the specialist again in a week or two and hopefully we’ll know by then which path we’ll take.”