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If the AFL is serious about head protection, Luke Hodge must be rubbed out.
Luke Hodge, like former Hawthorn champion Leigh Matthews, has established a reputation for a game built around toughness and unwillingness to physically compromise. His team prides itself on ‘unsociable football’, playing on the edge of the rules and bullying opponents into submission.
However, his unprovoked attack on Andrew Swallow earlier this season, along with last night’s vicious, neck-snapping bump on Chad Wingard, will have gone some ways to altering public perception of a player who is held in high stead down a notch – if the public’s condemning of Adam Goodes’ semi-fictional ‘dirty play’ is any measure to go by.
Hodge’s reputation as a champion footballer and an inspirational leader – and a great bloke – must not be allowed to get in the way of any MRP or tribunal hearings. Far too often incidents involving high profile players are swept under the rug, from Joel Selwood gouging Ben Howlett’s eyes being uncited by the MRP to Lance Franklin only receiving a one-game suspension for a head high bump on Shane Edwards.
The sycophantic media, notably the Channel Seven commentary team were happy to underplay Friday night’s incident despite having the slow motion vision of Hodge clearly intending to bump Wingard’s head, an act by itself worth a few weeks on the sidelines – let alone when Hodge had the Port Adelaide player’s head lined up with the goal post.
If the AFL is serious about protection of the head then Hodge shouldn’t be seen in the first week of finals. If that makes Hawthorn’s job harder in Perth, so be it. If it means that we see a good player rubbed out for a big final, taking it down a peg for the neutral crowd, so be it.
The players who are most respected by their peers shouldn’t be let off lightly, as it sets an example to the rest of the league. Play recklessly beyond the rules and you can get off, as long as you’re already held in good public stead.
Unfortunately, due to a multitude of factors, it’s likely Hodge will escape any meaningful sentence. The aforementioned champion reputation and the increased likelihood of leniency for star players, on top of Wingard’s lack of injury, serious or otherwise, will not bode well for those hoping to see an adequate punishment.
The final nail is Wingard’s comments in the media, where he said on 3AW that he had ‘the utmost respect for Hodgey’, and that he would be ‘disappointed if [Hodge] got more than one week’.
Playing the straight bat in the media aside, Wingard could have easily had his neck broken by the reckless act. The AFL’s policy of determining a punishment based on injury will come back to bite them, when someone gets seriously injured because no appropriate deterrent punishments have been handed out.
Do the right thing and rub Hodge out for the thug act he committed and don’t take his public reputation into account while doing it. Or don’t, in predictable MRP chook lotto fashion.
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