Partick Thistle comeback star Stuart Bannigan has backed his friend Gary Fraser to follow him back from a long period on the sidelines into the Jags’ midfield.

The two players were together almost every day as they have painstakingly worked their way back to fitness over the last 18 months, providing support to one another during some of the darkest moments of their careers.

Bannigan has now made his return to first-team action, starting both of Thistle’s league fixtures so far this term, and he has his fingers crossed that it won’t be too long before Fraser is joining him in the Thistle engine room.

“I don’t need to listen to his terrible songs anymore which is a good thing,” Bannigan joked.

“Gary is out of the gym now and he’s out on the training pitch doing a bit of running and a bit of ball-work, so fingers crossed for him it shouldn’t be too long.

“It’s been a frustrating time for him. He never had a major injury like a cruciate or a broken leg, it was more of a weird injury he had where they would struggle to pinpoint where the pain was coming from at times.

“He seems to be getting over that now, and he says he is feeling a lot better, so fingers crossed for him that we see him back playing in maybe four to six weeks.”

Thistle may have lost both of their opening fixtures against Hibs and Celtic, but for Bannigan, just being out on a football pitch has softened the blow of those defeats, at least a little.

“It’s been good individually for me,” he said. “Obviously, I was glad to play both of the league games, and play a major part in them.

“I’m disappointed with the results, but we probably couldn’t have picked two harder games to start the season with.

“I’m feeling good. I feel as if I still have a couple of gears to get up to in terms of my match fitness, especially towards the end of the games when I’ve been falling away a wee bit.

“There’s certain things in the game too that happen, but I don’t think I’m letting the team down even though I can definitely do better.

“Just getting out there was a great feeling to start with, even if you’re playing badly it’s a great feeling.

“Then you have the first tackle, then the first 90 minutes, and you have to take each step as it comes.

“I’m not even thinking about tackles or anything like that now, that’s all out of my head, it’s just about getting to the levels I know I can get to.”

Bannigan believes that he has come into a much better side than the one he limped out of at Tynecastle a year and a half ago, and that the progress of the club since is evidenced in the signings of Miles Storey and Conor Sammon.

“Two or three seasons ago, no disrespect to the club, but they might have looked at Partick Thistle and thought they could get better than that,” he said.

“They are seeing the club now, the way we like to play football and the fact we are growing as a club, and they are seeing a great opportunity to come here and play their football.

“We’ve come on leaps and bounds. We’ve signed a lot of good players and we seem to have established ourselves now.

“We’ve got a lot of players tied down on longer contracts now, and the club is going up and up.

“We’ve signed the deal for the training ground so everything seems to be rosy.

“The only hard part will be me trying to force myself into the team!”