Luke Hodge answers burning question as son Cooper joins Hawks training
Cooper Hodge, the son of champion Luke, training with Hawks players at the club's Waverley Park headquarters on Tuesday.
But before fans get too excited about the prospect of the talented teenager following in his famous father's footsteps, there is still one decision to be made.
Cooper, who is expected to nominate for next year's AFL draft, will be eligible to join Hawthorn as a father-son selection, but is also a member of Brisbane's academy.
It means he effectively has the choice of which club he wants to join, should they both deem him good enough to make it in the AFL.
Whichever club he decides on will then have priority access to Hodge at the draft.
Channel 7's cameras showed footage of Cooper mixing it with Hawthorn players at training on Tuesday and Luke was asked about it on The Agenda Setters.
'Yeah, well, they got him down. CJ's brother was out there as well. I think Mark Williams' son was supposed to be out there as well, but he rolled his ankle,' Hodge said.
'It was a good day once again going down there to really convince a young guy to come. They turned on the weather. It was about four degrees down there. I couldn't feel my hands.
'It was another good experience. He went out there and enjoyed the club.'
Cooper, who lives in Brisbane with his family, stayed at Jarryd Roughead's house during his time in Melbourne.
Roughead, a former teammate and close friend of Luke, now works in Hawthorn's list management team.
But Luke denied there was any special treatment for his son.
'It's a former teammate and a mate who's known Coop his whole life,' Luke said.
'He stayed at his house, but that's not surprising considering we don't have any family in Melbourne. My brother's down in Geelong, so the easiest thing was just to get him to stay at Roughy's.'
The Agenda Setters host Kane Cornes then asked Hodge 'what percentage is he Hawthorn and what percentage is he Brisbane'.
'He's about 50-50,' he joked.
'No, listen, it's a good experience for him. He's a 16-year-old kid who gets the opportunity to go down and spend two days.
'I 100 per cent understand (the level of interest in this), but the only thing is he's a 16-year-old kid who has the flexibility or he's been lucky enough to spend two days at Hawthorn.
'But then on the flip side, with the Brisbane Lions academy, he's been lucky enough over the last two years to be able to enjoy and spend time with some of the players and get coached by Grant Brichall and Mitch Hahn and these kind of guys.
'So he's been very fortunate and he's really loving football at the moment.'
The situation is similar to Sydney star Nick Blakey, who is the son of John Blakey.
John played over 200 games for North Melbourne and over 130 for Fitzroy, but he was an assistant at Sydney and Nick ended up at the Sydney academy.
Nick was eligible as a father-son for North and Brisbane but ultimately elected to be with Sydney. He was taken by the Swans with pick 10 in the 2018 draft, disappointing many North Melbourne fans.
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