Luke Hodge

But also players have had to respect the umpires a little bit more of late.

But I had numerous run-ins.

There's a couple of them.

Give us your best line.

There was one down in Tassie when I think I gave a free kick to Gaz Ablett and I've let the umpire know, yeah, effing Gaz, just as a joke, but that was more banter.

and the umpire got it on the recording.

There was another one where I was playing on Paddy Dangerfield and they gave away a free kick, and I was joking with Razor, and Razor gave me banter back.

So there's ones where you're serious, but there's also the good umpires let you know, hey, you're pushing the limit, just settle down.

And I got to that stage multiple times throughout my career, but you get that relationship with the umpires where you know who you can push, and then when they give you a certain look, you know, hang on, I better just pull up here because I'm going to give away a 50 or might even get fined.

Yeah, well, first of all, the amount of Essendon supporters that could actually sing their song after about 320-odd days.

So it was starting to get to them.

At halftime, it didn't look great, considering I think they were 12 or 15 points up with about 10 minutes to go.

And then their second half was really good.

But you sort of look at the toll of the impact that's taken on their leaders.

Obviously, with Zach moving, opting, trying to move, and then coming back, they had to take him out of leadership group.

And a lot's fallen on Andrew McGrath's shoulders, considering you look through and

The leaders from last year has continued on this year.

Redman, he's not playing because he's obviously hurt himself.

Martin, who had his injury last year, was in the leadership group.

He's obviously not out there.