Alastair Clarkson says Luke Hodge's recovery is progressing well. Picture: Michael Dodge/Getty Images Source: Getty Images
Lance Franklin shows off some new facial hair at Hawthorn training. Picture: Wayne Ludbey Source: Herald Sun
HAWTHORN coach Alastair Clarkson has denied reports his captain Luke Hodge has had a setback in his recovery from off-season knee surgery.
Hodge joined teammates in training at a wet and windy Waverley Park this morning and appeared to move freely.
Clarkson said he expected Hodge to be playing footy come Round 1 of the season and although he did not rule out that that may be in the VFL, he remained confident in the captain's short-term prospects.
"We've got to make a judgement at that point in time, but as long as he doesn't have any setbacks between now and then (he'll be playing)," Clarkson said.
"He's training today and we've still got four weeks until we play. My experience with footy is that four weeks is a good time once you start full training to get yourself ready to play footy, we've just got to make a judgement on when he starts playing matches and whether he's conditioned well enough to play Round 1.
"He's the captain of our footy club, it's going to be pretty tempting to select him, but we'll make that call at the time depending on how his last four weeks have been at that time."
Clarkson said the club would use the old adage of "it's a marathon, not a sprint" when assessing the merit of picking Hodge for the Round 1 encounter with Geelong or holding him back.
"Particularly with the demands on players," he said.
"It was interesting reading an article coming out of Collingwood saying they'd consider resting players a bit more, I think that's been happening across the whole competition the last two or three years.
Even the newer clubs have been doing that with some of their younger players.
"That's what's happening with the NAB Cup too especially when you're only allowed 22-24 players to play."
Hodge told the Herald Sun this month that he was fully confident in his ability to play the opening rounds of the season.
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Clarkson said Hodge's temptation would be to play.
"I don't think any player doesn't want to play because they're all competitors and they want to play footy. But I think it's just something we've got to get used to as a competition and the players have to get used to that as well."
Clarkson praised the AFL's decision to go easy on its trial of capped rotations throughout the NAB Cup.
There will still be a cap of 80 rotations for games (with a maximum of 20 per quarter) in the next two weeks, but instead of the traditional one substitute-three interchange bench teams will be able to utilise three substitutes as well as three interchange players.
"We've got Xavier Ellis and Liam Shiels for instance who we want to play next week who we would have felt compelled to play them at 80 per cent game time," he said.
"But now we've got the flexibility to be able to play them for 40 or 50 per cent game time and that's probably ideal in their first games."
Ellis has been suffering from calf tightness, while Shiels had a late start to his pre-season campaign.
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