I FEARED FOR MY CAREER... I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M BACK
IT WAS the medical jargon and disturbed tone of the specialist which caused Jonathan Hogg to fear he had suffered, in his own words, a ‘life-changing injury’. Wearing a neck brace — as well as the muddied strip of Huddersfield Town — he was strapped to a bed in Bristol Royal Infirmary, the left side of his body absent of feeling. It was then that he was told he had broken his neck. Earlier on that Friday evening less than three weeks ago, Hogg collided with team-mate Mark Hudson during a televised game at Bristol City. For 15 minutes he lay stricken on the turf. Supporters from both sides sang his name as medics stabilised the midfielder, whose wife and two daughters were in tears as they watched from the family home on Teesside. It is a miracle, then, that the 28-year-old talks to us wearing his Terriers training kit. Late last week he received the shock, yet welcome, news that his cervical spine was not fractured. Against all the odds he will now return to lead Huddersfield’s bid for promotion to the Premier League. First, though, he wants to relive the events of March 17. There is raw emotion in his voice. ‘I was chasing back and nicked the ball away from Lee Tomlin. I didn’t see our skipper running towards me,’ he recalls. ‘I didn’t have time to brace myself. I clattered straight into his chest and my neck folded. I’ve never felt pain like it. ‘I heard a big click, which was my bone. I then got shooting pains down my arms and legs. My whole left side was numb and I had a burning sensation. ‘I just wanted to get up and walk away and say “I’m fine”, but I knew I wasn’t. By the time we got to hospital the pain had gone but I had no power in my left arm. When I got the news that it was a fracture, my heart just dropped. ‘The way the doctor was speaking, it was not good. I thought then that the damage was life-changing.’ Meanwhile, Hogg’s wife Louise made frantic calls. His girls — Lila, nine, and Libby, six — were not going to bed until they had spoken to Dad. Eventually, Hogg’s mobile phone was brought from the stadium. ‘The game was on Sky and that made it so much worse because my kids were watching,’ says Hogg. ‘They were crying in front of the TV. It was only a few hours later I was able to Facetime them and they had red rings around their eyes. It was heartbreaking.’ Back at home in Middlesbrough for the past two weeks, Hogg says he has been given ‘so much love’. ‘It was nice to have a rest but the news this week was incredible, I’ve been so lucky,’ he says. ‘The specialist told me, “It would be a lot easier for me to say don’t train, but you’re fine”. ‘I had thought that was me done
until next season, which was devastating, the thought of missing the business end.’ If he does help huddersfield win promotion — they are third in the table — it will mark a return to the top flight some seven years after he made his aston Villa debut. hogg joined Villa at 16. he was 18 and earning just £90 a week when lila was born. life was a struggle. enter Gary and Sharon Gardner, the parents of hogg’s Villa team-mates, craig and Gary. ‘The Gardners offered to take me in,’ says hogg, who left Villa for Watford, then joined huddersfield in 2013. ‘They treated me like a son. ‘I had my baby and missus back in Middlesbrough and all I could afford each week was the petrol home. ‘after that I didn’t even have enough for a sausage roll. But big Gary used to drive up and bring them down to see me. I owe the Gardner family so much.’ It was always going to take more than a suspected broken neck to keep hogg away from the run-in. For a return to the Premier league, now that would be life-changing.