Luke Hodge reflects on his 18-year career in the AFL — and how Lions are keeping him young

Luke Hodge has done it all in 18 seasons at AFL level. The four-time premiership champ tells Andrew Hamilton about his early days, Buddy and Cyril, eating cheese burgers and the young pranksters at the Brisbane Lions.

Luke Hodge is a general for the Lions. Pic: Michael Klein

Luke Hodge has done it all in 18 seasons at AFL level.

The Courier Mail’s chief AFL writer, Andrew Hamilton, asks the four-time premiership star about his early days, Buddy and Cyril, being scared of Clarko and the young pranksters at the Brisbane Lions.

Andrew Hamilton: “We’ll start at the very start in 2001 and perhaps the most famous draft of all. You were the surprise number one pick.

Luke Hodge: Hey, ease up.

AH. Did you know it would be you and how familiar were you with Chris Judd and Luke Ball?

LH: No, this was 18 years ago. You knew of blokes but you didn’t have a TV show on under 18s and there wasn’t much written about it. As it got closer it was identified that it was going to be the three of us. Juddy was always the best player. He was 6’3, he could run like the wind, had endurance, strength, he looked like a footballer. Bally was a skinny kid who was going to do Year 12 in his first year, and I was the fat kid from Colac.

Luke Hodge has two Norm Smith medals to go with four flags. Pic: Getty Images

Hodge loves getting back to Colac, where he played in an under-18s premiership in 2000.

AH: History has shown Hawthorn made the right choice but they didn’t necessarily see it that way for a while, and recruiter John Turnbull copped a lot of flack.

LH. Yeah, well he got the sack three years later. Juddy had come out and won a Brownlow after his third year. I hadn’t done a pre-season the first year. Had stress fractures in my right foot in my second year and stress fractures in my left foot the third year. So it got to a stage where Schwabbie (Coach Peter Schwab) got sacked, John Turnbull got sacked, Juddy won a Brownlow and I had played 45 injury-plagued games.

AH: How were things at that stage?

LH: I was physically ready to play football. But mentally and professionally I was nowhere near it. I had come from Year 11 in a country town of 10,000 people into the big smoke. I didn’t have my licence ‘til round 13 in my first season. It was a massive learning curve. I was still learning things at 27 that, being from Melbourne, Juddy and Bally knew at 18 and 19. Maybe they were a lot smarter than I was but they had people around who knew the rights and wrongs of diet and how to recover (and) all that sort of stuff. Apparently cheese burgers after a game aren’t the best way to recover.

AH: I remember reading a great story about you before one of the grand finals you played in that talked about how you used to sneak back home to pay cricket in the early years.

LH: Footy started to feel like a job. We weren’t going great and there was a lot of articles about Hawthorn making the wrong choice. Every time there was an article it compared me to Juddy. I would find when I went back home my mates didn’t give a stuff if I was a footballer or a bloke having a beer in the pub or someone playing cricket with them. I would go back most weekends which funnily enough didn’t help my professionalism or diet but it helped me stay sane and keep mates I still have to this day.

Hodge celebrates a Hawks' win in 2006.

AH: Is it a source of pride that you outlasted Judd and Ball? I covered footy in Perth when Judd was drafted and he was phenomenal. He came up here once and destroyed Brisbane. Kicked five I think.

LH: Don’t worry, I read all those articles. I didn’t understand it at the time but I have learnt that people develop at different stages. It is what I try to tell to my young teammates now. I see Eric Hipwood, who is playing in the hardest position on the ground at 22, and I was struggling, hiding in a back pocket at the same age. You have got to have an understanding of how he is going and the expectations on him. People have put him as the Messiah up forward and are comparing him with Buddy. Buddy had a lot of senior blokes around him who were teaching him and helping him. ‘Hippy’ has had to do it with just his coach’s support and other young forwards. What I know now I’m trying to pass on to them.

AH: You played with some amazing footballers. Let’s start with Cyril.

LH: For a bloke to come in his first year, play 25 games and do some of the things he did was unbelievable. For him to finish so early it is just shattering. I would have loved to see him finish his last few years as a stay-at-home forward. Good luck to anyone who had to man up on him. He was a rare talent and I feel lucky just to have played and even trained with him.

AH: Buddy is the other one.

LH: You felt for Bud, and I was pretty similar I reckon, being a 17-year-old coming from a small town. You could see Melbourne didn’t suit him. I remember hearing from a couple of the boys that he used to go to the same café and they would tuck him away in the side because he couldn’t have a coffee or a feed without someone asking for a feed. And Bud was very shy. When he made the move to Sydney you could see why he did it, you couldn’t blame him for it.

Cyril Rioli’s retirement is “shattering”, Hodge says. Picture: David Caird.

AH: What about pure ability, where does he rank?

LH: He had the ability to run like the wind, had that raking left foot, he was strong. If there is a chance for him to get the ball he is as fast as anyone, if there is a chance for him to defend oh, you won’t see him anywhere (laughs). But you look at Adelaide in 2007, he was a 20-year-old kid, it was our first ever final and he stepped up and kicked seven and we won. We knew then he was the guy who wanted the ball in pressure situations.

AH: Is there one there one moment among them all that stands out?

LH: The proudest part about those times was Sydney (2014 Grand Final) when we went back-to-back. Jason Dunstall had done a video for us where he said the only other back to back in Hawthorn history was ‘88, ‘89 and he was a part of that. He said if you can achieve it you will pass ours as Hawthorn’s greatest achievement because of the way the game is going with equalisation and all that stuff. It should not happen. That got us going. Then all that week leading into the game it was “they took Buddy, he’s not taking one off us, they took one off us two years ago.’’ It is amazing what passion and motivation does to blokes who have felt disappointment and Clarko’s big thing was, ‘Don’t let it happen again’. Then to see Hannebery get hit by Luke Breust on the wing, Roughy in the forward fifty and then David Hale’s chase-down tackle, I don’t know how but he dropped him. I thought this is going to happen. The boys were perfect from then onwards.

Hodgey plants a kiss on old mate Buddy. Picture: Tim Carrafa

AH: So you decided to kiss Buddy?

LH: Ha, well that went back to round eight and we played Sydney for the first time. Mitch (Sam Mitchell), Brad Sewell and I weren’t playing, so it was the first time in Clarko’s coaching that one of the three older guys weren’t there. Bud came off the square and dropped Jordan Lewis and no one went to him. Then later on Birch (Grant Birchall) has picked up the ball and Bud has come and bumped him and no one went to him. Clarko was fuming. He said ‘If we ever play them again no one is going to run past him without hitting him’. We played them in round 22 or 23 I think at the MCG. It was about twenty seconds to go and I ran past him and he went to bump me and I forearmed him in the bicep. All I could hear was “you *&*%’’. I texted him after the game and he said, ‘Mate I can’t even hold my beer’, I had flushed him. So I knew when we played in the grand final he was going to come after me. He dropped me in the first quarter, we were both going and he just ran straight at me. We had a couple of tussles and then just before half time the ball had been kicked in and we were battling around, I gave away a free kick which the umpire didn’t call, we were standing there chest to chest and then we both walked away. That one there was like, ‘oh we’ll we’ve had a go at each other but we respect each other’. But then it happened again in the third, and for some reason he sort of leant in and I just kissed him on the cheek and then I just ran off. But I heard the crowd laughing and I’m thinking ‘oh no’. I turned around and it was on the big screen being replayed. I thought ‘f---, if Clarko has seen that I’m going to get dragged’. The runner came out and I piss bolted the other way, I was never sure if it was for me or not.

Hodge says the young Lions enjoy a prank. Pic: Getty Images

AH: I hear Alex Witherden and Cam Rayner like to terrorise you a bit and they are pretty accomplished practical jokers.

LH: When I first got up here I went to dinner with those boys and half way through they brought out a cake and someone put a sombrero on me. It wasn’t even my birthday, I went bright red but I remember when I was a kid I was a little smart-arse too.

AH: Really, we’ll need more on that.

LH: I was never a trouble maker, but if there was the chance to take the piss out of someone we’d take it. One time we went to Richie’s (captain Richie Vandenburg) house and tied up his front door with glad wrap. He had a hamstring injury at the time and we let off some fire crackers in his front yard, so he’s come shuffling out and run straight into the glad wrap. Just stupid stuff you do with mates. Stuff you sit back now and think, ‘how could I be bothered?’ But when you’re Witho and Cam’s age it is good harmless fun.