Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson has denied that Luke Hodge’s suspension for failing to inform the club that he would miss a training session has been treated more seriously than when he was caught drink-driving on the eve of last year’s finals series.
The former skipper will miss the Round 1 clash with Essendon after failing to inform the club that he wouldn’t be at a training session after hosting his brother’s 21st birthday.
Its Hodge’s second misdemeanour in the space of six months after he was stripped of 10 demerit points and received a $450 fine from the police for returning a blood alcohol reading of 0.068, but instead of receiving a club suspension, he was deemed free to play against Geelong and only issued with a $5000 fine.
Clarkson said that it wasn’t a case of double-standards, but two different issues that are dealt with differently by the club’s leadership group.
“One’s been treated by the law, and one’s been treated by our footy club,” Clarkson explained on SEN Breakfast.
“The one treated by the law is no different to you or anyone else having a drink.
“He didn’t actually do anything – he’s allowed to have a drink. He wasn’t playing at the time; he was with a couple of mates.
“Of all the protocols that we have at our footy club, he didn’t go outside of them, except in regards to the law and the law said that he’d tipped slightly over the edge in terms of having that drink – in terms of compliance what we (have) established at our footy club, he didn’t step outside of that.
“That’s why this one he did and albeit they say, ‘gee, you’ve got to be kidding (about the suspension)’, in terms of what he did there wasn’t too much in the one last week and there seemed to be more in the other one, but according to what we rate our players on in terms of their trademark and what they’re expected to do, that one was outside of our boundaries.”
Clarkson, who was at Harvard in the US at the time of the latest indiscretion, said that while he was consulted, the penalty was a decision made entirely by the leadership group and that the former skipper didn’t want to be the first one to get a ‘free-pass’ after transgressing.
“We’ve got expectations that our players will inform us if they can’t be at training and Hodgey inadvertently didn’t for reasons that he will want to declare at some point in time,” he said.
“Our leadership group has dealt with these sorts of things for the last eight or 10 years.
“They are the ones that are best suited to make decisions around violations to our trademark that are reasonably minor. Ones of much more significance that involve police, the board and senior management of the club and the coaching (staff) comes into those sorts of ones.
“At this level, when its against things to do with how we go about our work day-to-day, then we leave those ones up to the leadership group by and large and its served us really well for a long period of time.”