Numbers Game: Moore on Hodge

WINS and losses, goals and points, kicks and handballs, and guernsey numbers made famous by the feats of footballers wearing them in September.

There’s no denying football is a numbers game.

Hawthorn has had plenty of players deliver in big finals over the years, and the current crop of Hawks will be striving to bring more success and silverware to the club in 2015.

hawthornfc.com.au caught up with a number of former Hawks greats, who talk about finals football and the player currently wearing the guernsey number they enjoyed success in.

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“I thought I might have been maybe the better 15 the club’s ever had, but I think Luke might have taken that mantle.

Kelvin Moore laughs; “that’s tongue in cheek".

While he may have joked about it, Kelvin Moore is among Hawthorn’s greatest players to have pulled on the number 15 guernsey.

A key member of Hawthorn’s 1971, ’76 and ’78 premiership sides - and a 300-game player - Moore is regarded as one of the great fullbacks of his time, named in the key post position in the Hawks’ Team of the Century.

It would be fitting then that in his time as an Assistant Coach at the Hawks, Moore would be the man to ensure the first selection in the 2001 draft, and future premiership captain, would wear the number 15 guernsey.

“I was part of the numbering system with John Hook and we used to allocate numbers,” Moore said.

“Every year you’d sit down and go through the numbers and some players who may have had a high number had requested a lower and all that sort of stuff.

“And it just so happened that particular year I think it might have been Aaron Lord, he left so 15 was vacant and so with my push we allocated it to Luke (Hodge).

“I was very pleased that 15 was available and I was able to pass it on to Luke, he’s worn that with great distinction over his career that’s for sure.”

And with the Hawks facing West Coast in Saturday’s premiership decider, Moore says the dual Norm Smith Medallist will be as crucial as ever in playing his role.

“Obviously he’s an important cog in the whole thing because apart from that he has got great leadership qualities on the ground, his versatility… whether it's down back sort of knitting the back line together or giving us something on ball, he’ll be required in two or three different spots.”

The triple-premiership player has watched the game and its different roles evolve.

“In my day it was obviously all one-on-one. Down at full-back, my first obligation was to try and negate their full forward and sort of push on from there," he said.

“Obviously now they have like a rolling defence if you like, you look back and one player’s got so-and-so at this stage and then someone else will have him. With all the rotations that happen both from the backs and the forwards of the opposition it seems to be completely rotating.”

While he played in three himself, the great Hawthorn teams of the 70s and 80s were unable to secure three premierships in succession, Moore says he’ll be nothing but happy to see today’s side achieve what has proven so elusive.

“I was very fortunate, ’71 I was probably only… 23, 24 games old. The first one for me sticks in my mind the most, but every one we won had a different but quite amazing feel about it," he said.

“I’d be very happy for them, I’d be very envious of them, but it’d be great for a club like Hawthorn who struggled for a long, long time back in the early days, to come up and achieve something like that.

“(In the) 70s we probably should have won at least back to back which we weren’t quite able to achieve, but three in a row is something special and as a past player I’d be absolutely wrapped because I’d be thinking of the club as much as the group of players.”