“Definitely chest high”

Dave Challinor said he would have been ‘fearing the worst’ had one of his players made the challenge that Ronan Curtis did on Jamal Lowe in Sheffield Wednesday’s win against Plymouth Argyle.

The Owls won 3-0 at Hillsborough on Saturday in Challinor’s first home league game with the goals coming from Billy Mitchell, Davis Keillor-Dunn and Di’Shon Bernard.

With the game goalless in the first-half, Lowe went down after being clattered in the air by Curtis. Wednesday’s players and staff immediately claimed for a red card. Replays showed it was a chest-high action but referee Anthony Backhouse only produced a yellow card.

“Well, it's definitely chest high,” Challinor told The Star. “I think you're always going to appeal for it. I think Tom (Cleverley) would have been appealing for it exactly the same, and he was open to that. What do you need to do? What constitutes a red card? If it catches him on the jaw, did Ronan Curtis mean it? I'd probably suggest no. The ball's coming over his shoulder, but if one of our players would have done that, I would have been fearing the worst. Thankfully, it didn't make a huge impact at the end of the game.”

In the end, it did not impact the result, much to Challinor’s relief, as Wednesday moved back into the play-offs ahead of Friday’s trip to Barnsley.

Challinor added: “He (referee) said there was, I think, minimal force. I suggest if it's you on the end of it, it might have a different thought. It's high. It's probably one of them ones you toss a coin, 50% of referees flash a red without even thinking. Anthony sort of decided to have a thought process and has gone with the yellow card. Like I said, the big thing is that it didn't decide the outcome of the game. I think we're all going to be aggrieved if it did. But thankfully it didn’t.”