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Sport Nation
When Luke Hodge dodged traffic to tear a calf muscle
Andrew Slevison • June 18th, 2025 3:20 pm
Luke Hodge has recalled the time in his career when he was happy to have fully torn a muscle in his leg.
It occurred in 2018 in his first season with the Brisbane Lions, started with calf soreness at training and finished with him sprinting across the road to avoid a car. As a result he tore his plantaris - a small muscle located in the calf.
The story came up this week after an early diagnosis of West Coast co-captain Oscar Allen’s lower leg sustained on Sunday night.
Hodge says the issue he had with his plantaris was easily fixed by fully tearing the superficial muscle.
“I think it was my first year at the Brisbane Lions. I felt it at training and it felt like a minor calf tear,” Hodge said on SEN’s Whateley.
“I half tore the plantaris and I didn’t really know what it did or what it was. It felt pretty bad.
“But they said you don’t really need it. You’d prefer to tear it fully.
“Mine was partially torn and I would have had to go in for an operation to get it snipped. The recovery from the wound was worse than the actual injury.”
Hodge remembers an unsuccessful gym session that was designed for him to fully go through the partially torn muscle.
After failing to achieve what was set out, Hodge would get the job done in a near mishap on the road and was good to play the following weekend.
“We went to the gym and my whole gym session was around ripping the rest of my plantaris because you don’t really need it,” he added.
“Funnily enough I did it crossing the road. A car came out from nowhere and I actually ran across the road and tore it fully. That was on the Thursday, and on the Saturday we did a running session with Selwyn Griffiths (now at Melbourne).
“I was like, ‘Mate, I’ve just torn a muscle, I shouldn’t be running’. He said, ‘It’s ok, just push through it’. By the end of the session after doing 9kms it felt fine and I played the next week.”
It has since been revealed that Allen has sustained ‘damage to his left calf and minor damage to his Achilles’. The Eagles say Allen will be sidelined for the ‘medium term’.
Nevertheless, Hodge’s anecdote pricked our ears.
