After battling an achilles injury over summer, Hawks' coach Alistair Clarkson praised Hodge for admitting he was not ready for round one but would play for Box Hill.
"We've got 22 fresh blokes and obviously 'Hodgey' is a pretty valuable player to us and captain of our footy club, but we want to take fresh guys, and Hodgey acknowledges that he needs to get some match fitness," Clarkson told media at Melbourne Airport on Friday morning.
"He'll play at Box Hill tomorrow afternoon and hopefully he gets through that game pretty well and will be in a better position to put his hand up for selection next week," he said.
"As we saw last night, every side has one less interchange player and that's going to place extra demands on the players who are playing, so it means you've got to take in fresh players and Hodgey's not quite there yet in terms of his match fitness."
"I think he's done the right thing by the footy club and his teammates by saying, 'I'm not quite there, and there's 22 other guys who have had stronger performing pre-seasons than I have' and hopefully he'll be ready to go for the Melbourne game in round two," Clarkson said.
Hodge's premiership teammate Xavier Ellis will also play for Box Hill after being named an emergency for the Hawks. Clarkson said Ellis was unable to break into the team due to better depth in 2011.
"He's going to play (in the VFL). We've got some good players who have just been unable to force their way into the side. We've got some exciting young talent coming into the group who have deserved their opportunities to play the first game, particularly Shane Savage, Liam Shiels and Matt Suckling," Clarkson said.
"That's forced guys like Xavier Ellis and Brent Guerra [out], and Kyle Cheney had a great pre-season and is really stiff to miss out, but we've got a fit group and good depth playing at Box Hill that will allow us to make changes through form or injury," he said.
Clarkson said facing Adelaide at AAMI Stadium would be a good early test for his side, with high expectations on how the Hawks will go this season.
"We've got a big test against Adelaide, they're really tough to beat there early in the season. We've had a tremendous pre-season in terms of player availability and we feel we've been able to consolidate some of the gains we made in the second half of last year, but only time will well," he said.
"We can't have put ourselves in a better position heading into round one, and we're really excited about the season ahead."
