So it was with great relief and a bit of excitement for Hodge that Hawthorn did the job on Fremantle at Aurora Stadium last Saturday to confirm a finals spot.

Relief because of what a rollercoaster ride it has been for the Hawks in 2010 and excitement because, as he said in an interview this week, “Finals are why you play this game.”

It is a finals berth the Hawks were expecting as they flew through the pre-season largely injury-free, but which then looked nigh on impossible when floundering at 1-6, a position from which no team has ever made the finals.

“Our goal at the start of the year was to make the finals, so we’ve ticked that box,” Hodge says. “But we shouldn’t have let ourselves get into the situation we did. We’re happy to be in the eight.”

The injury bug that hit Hawthorn early in the season has been well-documented. At one stage, the Hawks were forced to play Hodge in the ruck in a game it dropped to North Melbourne at Aurora Stadium. Hodge believes the round-five loss was the low-point of the season.

“The North game was really disappointing. We fell behind then came back to hit the front, but to North’s credit, they came back again and beat us,” he says.

“But the Hawthorn sides I know shouldn’t have lost the lead like that. The way we’ve played the last couple of years we would have kicked on once we hit the front.”

Things didn’t improve the next week. The 43-point loss to Essendon on a Saturday night at the MCG deflated everyone with an allegience to the brown and gold.

“We just looked second rate in every aspect,” Hodge says. “They beat us to the contested ball, ran harder than us, won contested marks and pretty much just bullied us. It got to the point where I was thinking

"What are we doing and where are we going?’”

Read the full story in this week’s edition of the AFL Record, available at all grounds.