Clash of the titans: mates Luke Hodge and Patrick Dangerfield rumble in Hawk’s 300th game

MATES Luke Hodge and Patrick Dangerfield predicted during the week a physical clash between the two stars in the Hawk legend’s 300th game today. It was no joke.

Mates Luke Hodge and Patrick Dangerfield have a laugh following the Cats narrow win over the Hawks. Picture: Michael Klein

IT was the moment that Colac collided with Moggs Creek on the outer wing of the MCG as two of the game’s greatest players locked horns for almost certainly the final time.

With only a few minutes to play in today’s Hawthorn-Geelong clash, and with the game in the balance, Luke Hodge and Patrick Dangerfield saw the ball and saw no other option but to charge headfirst at each other as if it had been preordained.

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In a sense, it had seemed that way. In a series of pre-game text messages and lighthearted jokes about what might happened in Hodge’s 300th game, they had both forecast another close encounter of the Hawks-Cats kind.

They also threw up the prospect of a likely collision between the two good mates, who also happen to be products of Victoria’s footy-obsessed western districts.

Hodge, the one-time kid from Colac who announced this week he will retire at season’s end, attacked that late contest as if his life depended on it.

So, too, did Dangerfield, the most famous resident of Moggs Creek, just 60 kilometres down the road from Hodge’s hometown.

“I ran into him (Dangerfield) in that last quarter, and he was hard as well ... I felt it,” Hodge said after the match. “We’ve become pretty good mates over the years and there was a fair bit of banter between us (leading into the game).

“I’ve had 16 years of loving football, and that’s the reason I love it so much. There is the competitive side, but there is also the part where you go out and play against mates as hard as you can.”

Mates Luke Hodge and Patrick Dangerfield have a laugh following the Cats narrow win over the Hawks. Picture: Michael Klein

Hodge could see the “irony” of how his mate from Moggs Creek was the main reason why his milestone match didn’t end with a win.

Dangerfield turned in one of the more remarkable matches of his career, overcoming a foot injury to play deep and kick 5.6 in the Cats’ thrilling three-point over the Hawks.

The pair even played on each other for a short period during the third term as the Hawks wrestled with how to best manage the problem that was Paddy in the Geelong attack.

“I might have asked him how his leg was,” Hodge said of the on-field exchange. “I found out pretty quickly that it was all right ... I wouldn’t have been saying too much because he got a mark and got a free kick. I think I was screaming (out) for help.”

Ever the competitor, Hodge was never going to give up.

After a week in which his celebrated career was retold, and with most of his family having made the trip up the highway, he was always going to have something special up his sleeve.

Not long after that bump with Dangerfield, with less than 20 seconds on the clock, he launched a right-foot goal from 45m out to cut the margin back to only two points.

“We realised there wasn’t long left,” he said. “It was all about taking the game on.”

The Hawks had a chance to pinch the game late, but Isaac Smith missed a running shot, with only five seconds left.

Who wouldn’t want a piece of the Hawks legend after his 300th. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

Typically, Hodge was not blaming Smith — who also missed an after-the-siren set shot against Geelong in last year’s qualifying final — for playing on and missing.

“(You don’t) cut off the head of the player who misses,” he said. “We missed that last one (and that’s) irrelevant because we had a lot of guys who missed them throughout the game and we had a lot of guys including myself, who gave away free kicks or cost goals at the other end.”

Hodge embraced with Dangerfield at the final siren, with the Cats star saying of his good mate: “He’s a champion of our sport ... the game’s going to miss him, I’m going to miss him.”

So are we all.

Originally published as Clash of the titans: mates Luke Hodge and Patrick Dangerfield rumble in Hawk’s 300th game