Luke Hodge says history is irrelevant as he aims to lead Hawthorn to another premiership

LUKE Hodge doesn’t want to talk about last year. History is irrelevant, he says, for him and his Hawks as they embark on yet another premiership campaign.

LUKE Hodge doesn’t want to talk about last year.

Doesn’t want to talk about the Grand Final win over West Coast.

He especially doesn’t want to talk about the personal drama leading up to the first final against the Eagles.

History is irrelevant, he says, for him and his Hawks as they embark on yet another premiership campaign.

And when he says history is irrelevant, he means it: Don’t go there.

Almost always when Hodge speaks, he stays between the flags. He never provokes controversy. He never disrespects the opposition. He never gives up club secrets. What others will say in 100 words, Hodge will try to say it in 20. He’s safe, perfect as captain.

On the field, however, we see the alter ego. He’s in your face. It’s kill or be killed. Demonstrative and aggressive.

His game face doesn’t hide anything, either. There’s fire in the eyes and you just know the mind is in perpetual preparation for combat.

On this day, and off the field, there was combat.

Hawthorn has won the last three premierships but Luke Hodge says that’s irrelevant. Picture: Michael Klein

“I get angry when people try to get stuff out when they know you don’t want to,’’ he said.

There was a pause. A silence. A stare.

“There you go,’’ he added. “There’s the game face.’’

As captain, Hodge is protective of his football club and his teammates. As a father, he’s protective of his children.

Just don’t go there.

The brief exchange says plenty about arguably Hawthorn’s greatest player since Leigh Matthews.

You push and he’ll push back harder. You test him and he’ll beat you down with a competitive spirit which is both admirable and, at times, frightening.

“This year, what I’m focusing on is my role. I’ve had an interrupted season and my body has got better and better as the weeks have gone on."

- Luke Hodge

He’s 32, Hodgey, and earlier this season Matthew Lloyd suggested the injured skipper was a “banged up warrior’’ and vulnerable to forced retirement.

Hodge laughs now — he recently signed a one-year contract extension — but didn’t laugh then.

“When you’re not playing, it’s hard to get recontracted when you’re older,” he said.

“But that’s media, that’s the hype of football. You can’t want good things written about you all the time and when they put their point across, you can’t go and crack the s---s.’’

Still, he doesn’t like being doubted.

On Friday, the Hawks meet Geelong in a salivating MCG encounter. There are doubts about the Hawks and their game style, about their youth and about their ageing champs.

Luke Hodge goes one-on-one with Mark Robinson. Picture: Wayne Ludbey

But Hodge’s mindset, he says, never waivers.

“My mindset as far as what you have to do for the team is the same,’’ he said.

“What you’ve got to do on game day and whatever position you are put, you’ve got to have the same mindset. That is the same as every final series I’ve been in.

“This year, what I’m focusing on is my role. I’ve had an interrupted season and my body has got better and better as the weeks have gone on.’’

Let’s be honest about mindsets. This time last year, Hodge went into that first final against the Eagles with all eyes upon him. He played halfback in the first half and in the middle after halftime, but by then the game was cooked.

Asked about his mindset going in with everything else going on, he said: “They play an unbelievable style of football over there ... we knew it was a big challenge.’’

OK, but what about you?

Pause. Silence. Stare.

“I felt determined to play well,’’ he half-snapped.

Pause. Silence.

“But I feel like that before every game. Sorry, I will take that back. Obviously, finals are a different mindset, you know it’s a be all or end all, and whether it was the first final last year or the final this week, or a final two years ago, you want to play your best in finals because that’s what people judge you on,” he said.

Luke Hodge is pushed off the ball by Eagle Elliott Yeo during last year’s loss to West Coast in the qualifying final. Picture: Wayne Ludbey

“People don’t remember Round 5, people remember finals and what you put out.

“And sometimes you have a crap final and that’s life and you don’t dwell on it.

“And sometimes you muck up in life, but you don’t dwell on it, you learn from it.’’

Friday night’s clash will be Hodge’s 22nd final. He’s an old man in football terms, but still a young man dealing with nerves and anxiety.

“There’s always nerves, always anxiety because you want to perform,’’ he said.

“And being there the past few years, there’s pressure to perform. I look at that as a positive and not a negative because having that expectation, I believe, brings the best out of people.

“That’s my mindset. You have anxiety and nerves and you’re going to do anything you can to win. That gets the best out of people.’’

“People don’t remember Round 5, people remember finals and what you put out."

- Luke Hodge

In the eyes of many, the Geelong-Hawthorn clash is a modern-day, masterclass rivalry.

But not so for Hodge. He reckons every team is a rival. It’s the Viking attitude: Who are we fighting today? The English? The French? The Scots?

He doesn’t get personal with any opposition. “Not until I step over the line,’’ he said.

“People talk about rivals. Yes, two good football clubs who have been successful in the past 10 years who are going into battle again,” he said.

“Yeah, we had 2008 when they should’ve beaten us, blah, blah, blah. But then look at Sydney. Why don’t people talk about Sydney and Hawthorn? We’ve had two Grand Finals. We should’ve beaten Sydney in 2012, Sydney should’ve beaten us in ‘14 if you look at the history going into those games.

“People talk about the Essendon and Hawthorn rivalry. But that’s the supporters building up the rivalry a lot more than the players do because you’re emotionally attached to the game.

Hawthorn will play Geelong in a qualifying final on Friday night — a team they haven’t played since Round 1. Picture: Colleen Petch

“But as soon as that game is played, you’ve got to relieve yourself from them and focus on the next week. It’s a business like that. There’s that battle and then you go on to the next team.

“If you get too wound up on the rivalry or this or that, it takes away your attention from the next thing you have to achieve.’’

Everything’s matter-of-fact with Hodge, such as talking about the alluring possibility of a fourth consecutive premiership.

“As far as thinking, ‘I wish, I wish, I wish I could do it’, then no. It’s not like that. People talk about it so of course it gets in your head. But you’ve got to eliminate what’s irrelevant.

“It crosses your mind because people mention it, but as soon as you go to training, as soon as you go to work, as soon as you go to the football, it’s irrelevant because you’re there to do a job and if we do our job to the best of our ability, it’s going to give us the best opportunity

“Sometimes, it falls your way. We’ve had three or four prelims where it’s been under a goal. Those games could’ve gone the other way, so you can’t get too carried away with what might be, you’ve got to be in the moment.’’

The moment takes years to prepare for and if not for a couple of men, Hawthorn’s fitness guru Andrew Russell and personal body movement specialist Mark McGrath, and not forgetting the club’s physios and masseuses, Hodge wouldn’t even be in this moment.

They’ve got his body in working order again.

“If I didn’t put the time and effort in I have over the past four years with those two, I wouldn’t still be playing, my body wouldn’t keep up with it,’’ he said.

The mind, though, has always been willing.

When the greats describe Hodge, they always talk of his competitiveness.

Luke Hodge speaks to Mark Robinson. Picture: Wayne Ludbey

He’s not an especially great kick, or mark, nor born with natural speed. His gift is his desire to compete. He says you wouldn’t believe the intensity of the five-on-five basketball games at the footy club.

“I’m competitive,’’ he said.

But surely he wouldn’t crash into teammates as he did to Collingwood’s Adam Treloar on the Southern Stand wing in Round 23?

The game face returns.

“I thought you weren’t allowed to dive on the ball,’’ he shot back. “I didn’t think he was going to dive on the ball. If you look at it, my knees do go away from where he was.’’

There’s a line between competitiveness and thuggish and Hodge knows he’s crossed it and he knows people label him a thug.

“People can call me whatever they want,’’ he said.

“I’ve made a few errors on the footy field without a shadow of a doubt. A lot of them a spur of the moment, it’s not as if you plan it.

“What I laugh about is people sit back on the couch, they slow-mo it, they pause it, freeze-frame it slide by slide and they’ve got 15 seconds to analyse a split-second decision.

“People who know me know what I do for other people, what I do for charities, they know what kind of person I am."

- Luke Hodge

“And they say, ‘he should not have done that, that thug’. Put them in that situation and see what they will do. I’ve made errors and if I’ve had to go to the tribunal and I thought I did the wrong thing, I plead guilty and cop my whack. It’s a physical game and you do sometimes go too far.’’

As for the critics, Hodge smiles. “People are that biased towards their own team. I remember when I went over to Port Adelaide and the crowd was going nuts at me, but then Jonas who just whacked someone and knocked him out — was it Gaff? — they say, ‘no, no, he didn’t mean it’.

“Same as Hawthorn supporters when we played North Melbourne having a go at Firrito for what he did to Luke Breust. But if you put Firrito in a Hawthorn jumper, the fans would say this bloke would do anything for his teammates.

“I’m not fazed by people who sit on the couch and have a crack at someone,” he said.

“People who know me know what I do for other people, what I do for charities, they know what kind of person I am.

“So if people are going to sit on the couch and call me a thug, a s--- bloke, I’m not going to lose any sleep over that.

Hawthorn players Jarryd Roughead, Josh Gibson, Jordan Lewis and Luke Hodge with Daniel Burn, 3, during a visit to the Royal Children's Hospital for the On The Boot charity. Picture: David Caird

“We sit here as players and get criticised day in and day out, and we do more for other people, more for charities, than most anyone else. But the person sitting on the couch, or behind the key board, get on their moral high-horse and go hammer and tongs, but they don’t help anyone else.’’

Rant over. Game face gone. Family hat on.

We like to imagine Hodge as still the knockabout bloke from Colac who enjoys beers with the boys, cricket on lazy summer days and who just happens to captain premiership teams and win Norm Smith medals.

“People who have known me for a long time know how much I’ve had to change to go with football,’’ he said.

The fact is Hodge is a father of three — Cooper, 8, Chase, 3, and Leo, seven months — and combined with the professionalism required for football, he’s basically a subdued knockabout and an active parent and partner.

He says his life is perfect other than “if my seventh month old would sleep more’’.

His preparation on the day of the first final, he says, will be run-of-the-mill.

“I will have two kids run in jump on me in the morning and watch TV,’’ he said.

“It’s a school day so I’ll do the school drop off, have brekkie with my middle son, our youngest is starting to feed so he will be sitting around there, too. It will be a cruisy day, probably go for a jog, occupy yourself and Lauren will take Leo and Chase out of the house.

Luke Hodge celebrates last year’s premiership with two of his three sons, Cooper and Chase. Picture: Colleen Petch

“I’ll relax, might lay down, chuck on a movie, just relax the mind, the more relaxed the better.’’

He will get to MCG for his ritual physio session two hours before kick off, get the ankles strapped, get out for the warm up and get back in for the final 10 minutes.

Those last minutes are sensory overload. The nerves and the anxiety kick in, more than kick in, they pulsate and radiate in the individual and within the team. There’s touch and feel and noise of leather hitting hands and bodies smacking bodies.

The next time we’ll see Hodge is when he walks up the race — game face on.

It’s a rush, he says.

“It’s the rush of you doing what you love in front of a s--- load of people,” he said.

“It’s sort of hard to describe. You walk on to the MCG and so much is going through your head.

“You go through your role, what you have to do, things you have to focus on. Once out there, you look at the situation, the surface, is it windy, is it wet, you try to soak it all in. You try to get used to the crowd. You’re anxious because you want to do well.’’

And at that moment, last week, last year and absolutely everything else will be irrelevant.

Originally published as Luke Hodge says history is irrelevant as he aims to lead Hawthorn to another premiership