At the stroke of halftime, with the visitors down 1-0 in the match, the Huddersfield star was issued a second yellow card for catching Junior Firpo in the incident with a high elbow.
Following his viewing of the tape during his Sky Sports commentary on March 2 at 13:20, Hinchcliffe referred to the occurrence as “madness” and “dangerous,” implying that he was well aware of the possible consequences.
“It’s a raised arm from Jonathan Hogg, for such an experienced campaigner I’m really surprised if it is,” he said.
“The last thing you want to do is get a man sent off unnecessarily. You can see he just leans into Firpo with that left arm, he knows what he’s doing for me. That’s not accidental. He sees Firpo, raises the arm, has a little look at him. You can’t do that. You’re on a yellow as well. It’s madness.”
“I’m sure Jonathan Hogg will say he’s protecting himself, he’s raising that arm to protect himself but for me he isn’t. It’s dangerous. He’s raising that left arm up into the face of Firpo.”
Dirty Leeds United?
Although there’s a common proverb that Leeds is a filthy team, Hogg’s actions in that particular event were purely nasty and deliberate.
Even though the elbow he landed with no real force, it was obvious that he was trying to use it to frighten Firpo with the contact in order to deter him from going for the ball, which is exactly what happened.
Although it was the correct call for the referee to send Hogg out, one could just as well argue that he should have received a straight red card instead of a second yellow.
Hinchcliffe deserves praise for calling it out for what it was, since most would have preferred to give the player the benefit of the doubt. However, Hogg and everyone else were aware of what he was doing. It was simply disgusting.
