Huddersfield Town: ‘General’ Jonathan Hogg wants to lead troops back to Premier League

He also stated: “Say what you mean and mean what you say.”

Those quotations sum up the mentality of Huddersfield Town’s own chieftain in Jonathan Hogg better than a thousand words.

In his interviews, the Terriers’ captain speaks earnestly, but sparingly. He looks you in the eye and there is no baloney.

He similarly takes the lead with team-mates. Whether that be on the training ground, the heat of matchday battle – or even on a ‘Bear Grylls’ pre-season bonding trip to a remote Swedish island.

Hogg’s ‘survivor’ instincts drew gushing praise from then head coach David Wagner ahead of the 2016-17 campaign. A season which ended in promotion as this one just might on Sunday.

Should that happen, the man nicknamed ‘The General’ would lead Town up the steps. There wouldn’t be a dry eye across the east end of Wembley.

On his moniker, Hogg told The Yorkshire Post: “How it came about is that there is this one guy and every time I get off the bus, he says: ‘Go on Jonny Hogg, the General.’

“The lads have just picked up on it and at every game, you just hear them screaming it. It’s stuck and it’s good and I quite like it. I will have to get a ‘General’ outfit.”

As for whether he would relish a trip back to Sweden for pre-season, he continued, perhaps only half-jokingly: “I’d enjoy that. I might take the missus and kids there for a holiday.”

Hogg knows what it means to win a Championship play-off final on the hallowed turf – the fifth anniversary of Town’s feted victory over Reading is on Sunday – and lose. He was in the Watford side who lost to Crystal Palace in 2013. He knows which he prefers.

As with five years ago, the current Terriers crop are intent upon proving pundits wrong. As with Wagner’s class of 16-17, Carlos Corberan’s Huddersfield have also refused to go away in the promotion stakes in 2021-22, showing wonderful defiance in the process.

It is something that Hogg can equate to personally in terms of his own story. A ‘proper Terrier’ as Wagner used to regularly state.

He has earned things the hard way in a career which saw him rejected by hometown club Middlesbrough for being too small and then be written off after rupturing knee ligaments as a young professional at Aston Villa.

Now 33 and showing no signs of winding down whatsoever, Hogg – who will complete a decade of sterling service at Town next summer – said: “If I listened to all the critics out there, I wouldn’t be playing today. There’s so many people who try and knock you down.

“The drive is always there; as big as it ever has been. The day it is not there is the day I won’t walk over that white line.

“I do it for my wife and kids and mum and dad. When I went to Villa, I moved from home.

“With my wife now, I was with her from primary and secondary school. Moving away and being by myself was the hardest. And then I got that bad injury and we had a kid at a young age and she stayed at home with my wife. It was the most testing time.”

Tough times make good people strong as Hogg can concur with.

Sadly, Huddersfield’s demise after their remarkable stint under Wagner saw their renowned comradeship fade amid a painful descent from a Premier League story of note to Championship obscurity and near relegation.

Hogg is not one to suffer fools and did not like much of what he saw around him in the three seasons prior to the current one.

With assiduous recruitment, the dressing room has found itself again. ‘Terrier spirit’ is back, with Hogg remaining a precious link to the glorious past and a successful future, hopefully.

He said: “Credit to the club as they knew we were in a bad place when we were relegated (in 2018-19). The squad was not good enough and the camaraderie we had in the dressing room was not good enough.

“If we kept taking a backward step, we could’ve been relegated (again), but haven’t. That’s what this club is all about. Fighting.”

Whatever occurs on Sunday, one thing is for sure. Middlesbrough-based Hogg won’t have much time off. It’s not his way.

The midfield ironman, forged from Teesside steel, will be back pounding the hills he knows so well in the North Riding.

He added: “You cannot keep going like a robot and your body does need that time to recover. But after a couple of weeks, I will be back up the Eston Hills. I can’t sit in the house and watch telly.”