Apart from a weather update, the most common question Luke Hodge gets asked these days, now that he is a rusted-on Brisbane resident, is which club his boys might play for one day.
Perhaps stop reading now, Hawthorn fans, because you might not like the answer.
The three-time Hawk premiership skipper and dual Norm Smith medalist has told the Golden Years podcast that the Brisbane Lions, where he spent the last two years of his playing career and who he continues to serve as a part-time assistant coach, had grown on his family to the stage where his oldest son Cooper, is now a Lions fan.
“Especially when you get to age of 10, 11 and 12, when you get to spend time with the likes of Dayne Zorko, Harris Andrews, Lachie Neale, Charlie Cameron and those sorts of guys, they got him pretty quickly over to the Lions’ side, so at this stage I think he’d be a Lion,” Hodge said.
Cooper turns 12 later this year and while an AFL career seems a lifetime away, he will soon be old enough to enter the Brisbane Lions academy, which means that if he is eventually considered good enough, he could pretty much bypass the draft and be selected by the Lions.
Of course, he is also eligible to be a father-son selection by the Hawks, for which Luke Hodge played 305 games between 2002 and 2017 and it speaks volumes as to how adored Hodge is by Hawthorn supporters that he gets regularly asked about his children.
Hodge has four boys - Cooper, Chase, Leo and Tanner - and perhaps they might one day be faced with a similar decision to that of Nick Blakey, who came through the Swans academy and at the end of 2018, chose to stay at home and play for Sydney where his father, John Blakey, has been a long-time assistant coach instead of either Brisbane or North Melbourne which both had father-son claims on the talented forward.
But before Hawk fans become too concerned, Luke Hodge isn’t yet certain where his family will reside in the future. Once the games resume, he will be dividing his time between coaching at the Lions and commentating for Channel Seven, and if he decides to concentrate on the latter down the track, a relocation back to Victoria might be on the cards.
“If we move back to Melbourne, who knows? The good thing is there is a father-son rule and I didn’t play enough games for the Lions,” he said.
For their part, the Hawks have been notoriously hard-headed when it comes to the father-son rule. 2019 second-round draftee Finn Maginness was their first such selection for more than a decade.
But they did invite past and present players with their sons and daughters back to the club for a series of events last September, and with the next generation of Crawfords, Mitchells, Hodges, Rougheads, Burgoynes, Lewises and several others now on the horizon, the self-described Family Club is taking steps to live up to the billing.
The Golden Years podcast is available through Apple Podcasts, Spotify and through the official Hawthorn app and hawthornfc.com.au.
