Luke Hodge was sitting on his couch nursing an injured knee and some wounded pride as his football mortality briefly flashed before his eyes during an enforced break in 2012.

At 28, he had already secured his place in history as one of the Hawks’ greatest players, having won a Norm Smith Medal, two best and fairests and three All-Australians.

But Hodge’s ‘crash and bash’ approach – a fierce determination matched perfectly with razor-sharp talent and footy nous – had some wondering if this might have been the beginning of the end for a player who already expended so much in a magnificent career.

EVERY INDUCTEE: TEARS, TRIUMPH AND AN ALL-TIME HOF SPEECH

“I remember sitting on my couch and Mike Sheahan said (on Fox Footy) ‘I think he’s done … I don’t think his body can withstand it’,” Hodge told this masthead this week.

“I was supposed to miss four (games) but with the fluid on my knee, I ended up missing about 10 or 11, plus I had already missed a few with a calf that season.

“I was a crash and bash player. I couldn’t really argue with him (Sheahan) as (Hawks head of conditioning) Andrew Russell was saying the same thing.”

Hodge had a few concerns, but he was damned if he was going to give up without a fight.

What happened next saw him go from a champion player to one of the game’s greatest leaders, and in part, guaranteed him automatic entry into the Australian football Hall of Fame at a gala function at Crown Palladium on Tuesday night.

Almost all of Hodge’s individual honours (plus his maiden flag) came in the first incarnation of his career; the legacy part – and three more premiership cups plus a second Norm Smith Medal – came in the second.

He couldn’t be more appreciative of the honour, acknowledging all the people who have assisted him on his journey, including the support of his wife Lauren and their four sons, Cooper, Chase, Leo and Tanner.

Asked to reflect on the sliding doors moments of his 305-game career with Hawthorn as well as his 41 with Brisbane, Hodge reeled this 2012 moment as one of the most significant.

“Of course, you have a few doubts, but I went from doing things at 75-80 per cent to doing everything,” he said. “In terms of (sliding doors moments), that was one of the biggest.

“Mark McGrath was a body movement specialist and I would see him three times a week just to get through games. The boys used to hang shit on how much I used to see him.

“Even when I moved to Brisbane (in 2018) I flew him up there …”

Fuelled by a desire to leave nothing to chance, and content to play an even more selfless role, often at halfback, Hodge returned for the back end of 2012 and powered on.

Far from being on the slide, he would go on to lead the Hawks into four successive grand finals, captain a three-peat of premierships for the first time in the club’s history, and claim a second Norm Smith Medal.

Such was his impact that when Hodge retired at the end of 2019, Leigh Matthews told the Herald Sun: “Great player and great leader, the two things together are a combination which is rare as hen’s teeth … No one compares to Michael Voss, with me, except Luke Hodge.”

KID FROM COLAC

Hodge was the No. 1 pick of the 2001 ‘super draft’, with the Hawks choosing him over Chris Judd and Luke Ball, but his first few years in brown and gold weren’t easy.

The Hawks were struggling, and the young Hawk felt it when his great mate and fellow 2001 draftee Dan Elstone was delisted at the end of the 2003 season.

Then came a disastrous 2004 when the Hawks crashed further, costing Peter Schwab his job, and Hodge missed a swag of games mid-season.

“Footy was a bit of a grind. I was injured,” Hodge recalled, also citing the early comparisons with Judd didn’t always go in his favour.

“That’s why I kept going back to Colac the first three or four years. It wasn’t good professionalism-wise because I would go back and have a pizza and a few beers with my mates. But it was good for me mentally because my mates couldn’t give a stuff whether I had 30 disposals or kicked four goals.”

COMING OF CLARKO AND JACK

Everything changed for Hawthorn when Alastair Clarkson was appointed coach in late 2004, and he brought in Andrew Russell as head of conditioning.

Hodge sees that moment as one of his other sliding doors moments.

“It was a hard line (approach), not just for me, but for the whole club,” he said.

“I had had a few injuries, I was a little bit overweight. I had stress fractures over summer (in the early years) as I was playing tennis barefoot … just stuff that a young person who doesn’t know any better does.

In his first season under Clarkson and Russell, Hodge won the first of three all-Australian blazers and the first of two Peter Crimmins Medals.

DOING IT FOR CRAWF

Hawthorn was headed towards its first grand final in 17 years against an all-powerful Geelong after knocking off St Kilda in the 2008 preliminary final.

But the big question mark was whether Hodge was going to play after he was spotted coughing up blood after a collision with Justin Koschitzke.

“I went back with the flight, spoiling, and Koschitzke kneed me in the ribs,” he recalled this week. “I didn’t think too much of it. But I ended up coughing blood and the cameras got it.

“I played out the game and because of the vision people were talking about it.”

Was it broken ribs? Hodge still isn’t sure.

“I don’t know, we didn’t test it,” he explained. “Andrew Russell said ‘What’s the point of scanning it? We are going to do a test and if you are good enough to get through the test, you are right to play’.”

Hodge passed with flying colours.

“They had a wrap around (to cover it) where the ribs were sore. It clearly wasn’t punctured or anything like that. ‘Stokesy’ (Mathew Stokes) went to have a go at it in the first couple of minutes. There is some vision at the start where I had both my arms up and he was hitting the guard. I realised then that I was going to be OK.”

Hodge was more than OK. In a grand final boilover against the Cats, he was best afield with 26 disposals which included a crucial third term goal, earning him the Norm Smith Medal.

“To send Crawf off the way we did, that’s the thing that stands out for me,” he said. “What he did for our football club was just incredible.”

LOOKING FORWARD, NOT BACK

Hodge conceded Hawthorn over-celebrated after its 2008 flag, but he insisted the lessons stood the club in good stead long-term.

It’s a mantra he still carries. It conditioned Hodge to always keep looking forward, and to very rarely look in the rear-vision mirror.

“It’s always about the next phase of your journey. When I finished footy, the next phase was Channel 7 and coaching, and kids … It’s just a mindset thing. You never really get a chance to sit back and reflect on your journey.”

It worked for Hodge and the Hawks who ended up making the top four six years in a row (2011-2016), and playing off in four grand finals.

The heartbreaking loss to Sydney in the 2012 grand final still stings but the hard work was about to pay off.

THREE-PEAT

Hodge says his four premierships are special for different reasons, but the 2013 one was his first as captain, but also a way to purge the pain of the previous year.

“We were lucky to get there because Geelong was 20 points up at three-quarter-time (of the preliminary final) and we got over them at the end,” he said.

“Freo were good under Ross Lyon. But they missed some shots … I remember we were trying to change things around at three-quarter-time and we spoke to Bevo (assistant coach Luke Beveridge) about having ‘Lakey’ (Brian Lake) free and putting ‘Gibbo’ (Josh Gibson) onto (Matthew) Pavlich. And it worked … Lakey took five or six marks in the last quarter and little things like that are important when it could have gone either way.”

The following year, 2014, was all about redemption against Sydney for the grand final loss two years earlier, and about denying Buddy Franklin, who had moved to the Swans.

One of the unforgettable moments in a Hawthorn whitewash of the Swans came when Hodge planted a kiss on Franklin’s head.

“I sort of kissed him and didn’t realise the cameras were on us,” he said of the kiss. “They showed the replay and 100,000 started laughing. Bud took it the right way.”

Hodge was so influential that he won his second Norm Smith Medal with two goals and 35 disposals.

But the Hawks’ appetite was not yet sated, as they stared at a slice of history in 2015.

“Before the (2015) premiership, we went out to Damian Monkhorst’s farm (at Woori Yallock) and we had a message from Jason Dunstall, who said if we could win it, it would be our greatest achievement. Hawthorn had played in seven consecutive grand finals in the ‘80s, but couldn’t win three in a row. And we were trying to do it with equalisation and 18 clubs.”

Hodge and the Hawks sealed their place in history with a demolition of West Coast, with the skipper’s left-foot banana goal from the boundary becoming a part of grand final folklore.

He was a four-time premiership player and a triple premiership captain.

BECOMING A LION; NOW A QUEENSLANDER

Hodge’s retirement from Hawthorn in 2017 wasn’t his retirement from the game, thanks to a cheeky in-season text from former Hawk footy boss and Brisbane coach Chris Fagan.

“It was (a) tongue-in-cheek (text), saying ‘the sun up here (in Queensland) would be OK for that old body’,” Hodge recalled.

He didn’t think about it again until the end of the season.

“I was still feeling fresh,” he said. “At the end of the season, I spoke to Crawf and he said he wished he hadn’t retired when he did.

“I messaged Fages when the season was done and said ‘does that message still stand?’.

Hodge moved north with his wife Lauren and his young family, and he went on to play 41 more games in two seasons with the Lions.

He loved working with the young players at Brisbane, just as he did with the young Hawks at the back end of his career.

“The role I did at the back end of Hawthorn and at the Lions was about teaching the young guys,” he said. “I tried to teach them some of the things I didn’t learn until I was 22 or 23, or sometimes 28.

“I love the coaching side of things, and teaching people.”

Aside from his media work, Hodge still does a bit of coaching at the school of his son Cooper (who is a talented young footballer who may have to make a decision next year on whether to become a father-son at Hawthorn, or with the Brisbane Lions Academy).

Hodge has so many people to thank for his successful career, but says his wife and kids deserve so much of the credit too.

“To be a footballer you have to be selfless on the field, but it is a bit of a selfish life off it,” he said. “The family support I have had has been incredible.”