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Justin Hodges should be thanking his lucky stars that he’s playing in the NRL Grand Final this weekend.
Not because what he did was grossly wrong, or that it deserved a ban, but the fact that the call at the judiciary went his way. It hasn’t always gone the player’s way before the big dance.
On any other week, in any other game (except, perhaps, a State of Origin decider) Hodges would have taken an early guilty plea and missed a week of footy.
Everyone would have been okay with it – for it could be the punishment the tackle deserved.
No one was okay with him missing a week this time. The situation was far from an ordinary judiciary experience.
The tackle on Aidan Guerra didn’t deserve him missing a grand final, in which he was the retiring captain of one of the sides.
It was no one factor that decided this. Hodges is a key player. Hodges is the captain. There were mitigating circumstances, with Guerra coming in to testify that he jumped, making the tackle much worse than it could have been. Hodges is retiring. It would be his last game.
None of these by themselves could have led the judiciary make the decision they did – it had to be the potent cocktail of all of them.
How cruel it would be to rub out one of the greatest centres of the last decade of his last game; an NRL grand final no less. The fairytale’s life-force, one of the stories of the grand final, extinguished by the judicial executioner.
And for football fans everywhere, even those whose team has been on the end of a Justin Hodges step, run from dummy half, neat pass or sledge, there seemed to be consensus around a figure who rarely attracts agreement.
Hodges should play.
Despite his status as the player on the opposition that the fans love to hate, everyone I spoke to seemed to be of the view that he had to take part in this game, and that the punishment was too great for the crime.
Of course, that would be of little solace to Issac Luke, or Cameron Smith, or the late Arthur Beetson, or Luke Ricketson who, among many others, have been unlucky enough to be rubbed out of NRL grand final appearances due to on-field misconduct.
And while you feel for all of those individuals, there’s one thing they all had in common – they weren’t retiring, and therefore had the promise of another grand final, or at the very least another game, in them.
Hodges doesn’t.
It’s hard to say whether this has any influence at all, subconscious or otherwise, on the decision makers at judiciary level, but it’s also hard to see how it couldn’t.
Inevitably, key players have been let play as often as they have been ruled out in the NRL and State of Origin arenas for key matches.
So the endless debate rages about whether we should let emotion ever enter the discussion about whether players should or should not play after a high tackle, swinging arm or dangerous throw.
All we know now is that Hodges is free to play. Brisbane have their captain. The Cowboys are playing the Broncos at full strength.
Technically, the decision may be wrong. It also might be right. What is certainly right is the result for football fans, whatever you make of the process that gave it to us.
Bring on the grand final, with no excuses.
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