Could Hawthorn legend Luke Hodge turn Josh Schache around for Brisbane?
JOSH Schache is being labelled soft and uncompetitive, but could the intervention of one of the game’s toughest champions help him become a star?
Lions
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LUKE Hodge isn’t moving north to be the best Hawthorn-Brisbane dual-club half back flanker of all time.
To be honest, we aren’t exactly sure why he is moving except that he has an itch he wants to scratch.
Which is fair enough, given how long you are retired from this game.
But when he finishes two years up north he will have wanted to have left a legacy.
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Why can’t that legacy become a grand project: “The Resurrection of Josh Scache”.
There are still no takers for Schache.
Richmond has gone cold on him and Collingwood is adamant it will take its first pick at the national draft.
The Bulldogs are also denying they will launch the Tom Boyd Project Mark II.
So the Lions are faced with keeping their No.2 draft pick or accepting some embarrassing low-ball offer for a kid tipped to be a star two years ago.
It makes little sense for a club having just rectified its go-home issues to ship off a 200cm key forward in a trade fire sale.
It could reason if it doesn’t trade him now, he will probably want to leave again next year.
So why not use 2018 to pair him with one of the game’s greatest leaders to see if Schache is beyond hope or not.
Even if it’s true you can’t teach mongrel spirit — you are born with it — you could still learn a heck of a lot off a future Hall of Famer.
Get Schache to board with Hodge over the summer.
Tell him to shadow the four-time premiership champion at training.
He could find out what makes Hodge tick and Lions coach Chris Fagan could ask the former Hawks captain how to maximise Schache’s strengths.
Tell Hodge to get under his skin. Nurture him or niggle him, but Fagan, Hodge and football manager David Noble would have a better indication of Schache’s true worth.
Consider Schache’s circumstances. He lost his father at five, left his family to play interstate for the wooden spooner, was smashed by critics for his form and then endured a contract saga.
The 20-year-old’s 27 games have produced three wins and he often played on the opposition’s best tall defender and was rarely fed the ball by a winning midfield.
Only in professional sport would we say he has no appetite for the contest.
But does it mean, at 25, he won’t be the athletic, high-marking forward that never goes out of fashion in the AFL?
Taylor Walker doesn’t crash enough packs, but uses his unique skills to be one of the game’s best forwards.
Once he was a lad from Broken Hill lad silly enough to drink beer during a curtain-raiser after being dropped, but five years later he was an AFL club captain.
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