Matt Hodgson: The beating heart behind the business case

Matt Hodgson has never taken a backwards step on a rugby field. With the future of the Western Force now hanging in the balance, he refuses to take a backwards step off it, writes Scotty Stevenson.

Last night, following his side’s victory over the Kings, Matt Hodgson lamented the Australian Rugby Union’s acquiescence of SANZAAR’s call to cut three teams for the Super Rugby programme. He did something else, too: he showed us the beating heart behind the business case.

There is no man who has shed more blood than Hodgson for the Force. A foundation starter – he played in the club’s maiden Super Rugby game against the Brumbies in 2006 – Hodgson has pummelled himself 131 times for the cause. No player pummels himself like Matt Hodgson. Invariably he was a top-five tackler in the competition. He has been honoured as club man of the year four times. He played six games for his country.

If Hodgson played for a big name team, he’d be a big name player. At the very least he would be a cult hero of gnarly battlers the rugby world over. The reality is, he barely rates a mention outside Australian rugby circles. Maybe that’s because he has been marooned on the west coast, playing for a team that very few people give the time of day. That’s not his fault, and neither is the Force’s current, precarious position.

Perhaps that’s why last night’s questioning about the future of the Force finally got to him. Sitting there in his playing kit, Hodgson talked about how he got his opportunity to play professional rugby purely because the Force existed. He talked about coaching kids in Western Australia who, eleven seasons later, are now playing alongside him in the team. He talked about how distracting the restructuring of the competition has been for the players in the side.

You could be forgiven for thinking it was all a carefully orchestrated performance, an eleventh hour plea for clemency with the cameras rolling and the platform his. You could have thought that, until he talked about his own child. At that point, you realised everything Hodgson had said was heartfelt and honest, the way he always has been about this game, and the club.

On the verge of tears, his voice breaking, Hodgson said: “You don’t know where to put your kid now. Do I put him in rugby or do I put him in, to stay in Western Australia, AFL?

“For kids to turn up here now, that’s great. But they don’t know if the Western Force is going to be their future.”

And still no one knows if the Western Force has a future. That call will be made in the next “48-72 hours” according to Australian Rugby, who held their own press conference this morning to clarify the decision to axe one team from their professional landscape. The Waratahs, Reds and Brumbies are safe from the chop. Hodgson, like everybody else invested in the game, will now have to wait to see if the Force or the Rebels are destined for exile.

If this is all about economics, the Force are toast. The Rebels are privately owned while the Force have been the beneficiaries of millions of dollars of ARU investment. If this is about growing the game in Australia, the Force perhaps can legitimately claim to have a chance to cement rugby union as a higher-ranking choice of code, given the absence of an NRL side in the west and Melbourne’s obsession with AFL.

If this is about legal ramifications, the Rebels may well pose a sterner challenge to the ARU in the courts, and they would be foolish not to be seeking counsel while this decision continues to drag on.

Of course, none of this has anything to do with players like Hodgson. That’s the shame of it all. Hodgson deserves better from his governing body. Over his eleven seasons he has given back tenfold what he has taken from the game, and through his words and his deeds he has helped to give rugby union a profile in Perth. You would have to have plaque in the soul not to feel for the man.

Hodgson saved the Force countless times on the rugby field. He’s trying to save them once more. Whatever happens, he needs to know that he has done all he could. He wore his heart on his sleeve last night and the blood flowed blue.

Acknowledging that is the least we can do.

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