WHEN the history of Hawthorn's unexpected 10th premiership is written, the late-season decision to play Luke Hodge behind the ball in what has become known as the quarterback role will be seen as perhaps the tipping point that made this flag possible.

Certainly, he was the dam that halted the constant Geelong flow into its forward line on grand final day.

He held up the Cats, then launched many of the counter-thrusts that enabled the Hawks to build a lead despite Geelong's supremacy in the clearances and far greater number of scoring shots and forward 50 entries.

Had Alastair Clarkson not stationed him in defence — where the Hawks were without their premier tall back, Trent Croad, after half-time — they surely could not have prevailed.

First shifted back in the round-17 game against the Cats, Hodge transformed a defence that hitherto had been seen as the potential weakness of a team that loaded with talent in the midfield and attack.

By the final quarter of the grand final the Hawks were not supposed to win, the Hawthorn defence Hodge commanded had become the cornerstone of a premiership that was at least two years ahead of the club's own schedule.

Hodge had carried sore ribs into the game. It is a measure of his hardness that it was never in question that he would play — and play very well. "What ribs?," Hodge jested after the game, stubbie in hand, when asked about the injury he'd sustained in the preliminary final and endured for 7½ quarters.

It was evident from early on that if Hawthorn were to win, Hodge would be among its premier players. He lined up on Cameron Stokes, one of the least experienced and threatening of the Geelong forwards, and became the fulcrum of Hawthorn's counterattacking game, the best of Hawthorn's bevy of defenders with lethal left feet.

After 15 minutes, Hawthorn chief executive Ian Robson turned to president Jeff Kennett and said: "Hodge is going to win the Norm Smith here."

Robson's prescience was based upon the pattern of the game, which suited Hodge, surely the best behind-the-ball decision-maker in the game. "The way the game was panning out early, I could just see how important he was going to be to our structure."

Hodge became far more important 11 minutes into the second quarter, when Croad hobbled to the bench. The Hawks were down to 21 players, a number that would shortly become 20 when Clinton Young joined Croad on the sidelines. Hodge, technically a half-back flanker, was in truth Hawthorn's premier key defender; Clarkson just saw to it that he played on smaller men, whom he could brush aside and overpower.

"We didn't get too worried," Hodge said of the loss of Croad. "It's happened all year. If someone goes down, we've had someone to step up and play their role … we weren't too worried — as along as we controlled the tempo of the game, we knew we were going to go all right."

Hodge was not only a key defender yesterday, but Hawthorn's supreme on-field leader; captain Sam Mitchell had a poor game, smothered by Cameron Ling. Mitchell even had lapses of ill-discipline, twice snotting Gary Ablett and giving the Cats a late goal with a silly (albeit erroneous) relay free.

The only time when Hodge's influence waned was in the latter stages of the first term, when the pugnacious Max Rooke was sent into the Geelong forward line. It was no coincidence that the Cats were most ascendant when Mark "Bomber" Thompson placed his Rooke next to Hodge, the most valuable chess piece on Clarkson's board.

Hodge touched the ball 26 times, his influence most pronounced in the second half when the Hawks downshifted the tempo. Often a quarterback can be seen to be beneficiary of "cheap" and easy stats, but this cannot be said of the Colac lad, who had the most contested possessions (11). A dozen of his 26 came in the last quarter.

Hodge said slowing the game meant the Hawks were able to rest and conserve energy. "We sort of slowed the tempo up, which means we didn't have to run as hard. We sort of saved a bit of energy for a bit later. We knew if we could control the tempo of the game, it would put a bit more pressure on them."

Hodge, a former teammate of Ablett's from the Geelong Falcons, arguably did Gazza a service by denying him "Norm" in a week when he also narrowly lost "Charlie" (to Adam Cooney). Did Ablett wish to be the second person of that name to earn a bitter-sweet Norm Smith in a grand final defeat to his dad's first club?