Recalled East Wagga-Kooringal forward James Hodges repaid the faith shown in him on grand final day with a brilliant performance against Coleambally.
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Playing his first senior game since early July, Hodges proved a handful for the Blues from the outset. He had the first two scoring shots inside three minutes and finished the quarter with three goals – the last after a brilliant mark.
“Yeah I was happy with that, I didn’t expect to kick three goals like that but that’ll do me,” Hodges said with a laugh.
“Feels unreal. It’s what I’ve been wanting to do since I was a junior.”
Hodges came in for the luckless Brenton Roberts who injured a shoulder in the semi-final.
“Good to see the boys get over the line,” Roberts said.
“It’s just good for the club, personally. There’s a lot of people that do a lot of hard work, not just footy players, and it’s for them mate.”
EWK coach Gavin McMahon said Hodges deserved his chance and they reshuffled the line-up to replace a defender with the forward.
“He was pretty awesome wasn’t he?” McMahon said.
“We knew he’d been building for a number of weeks and as long as the conditions were right and the opposition was right we had huge confidence he was going to do that.”
Hodges and star forward Marc Geppert worked neatly in tandem together, and were devastating in the first quarter. Geppert finished with three goals and Hodges with four.
“It took a lot of pressure off, he was unbelievable early and we just outstretched them,” Geppert said.
“If it wasn’t one of us it was another and if it wasn’t the second bloke it was the third bloke.”
Geppert’s two first-quarter goals came on the end of passes from Brocke Argus. In the last quarter he returned the favour and Argus delivered with a goal, capped off with a dance move that sent the Hawks into raptures.
