Jonathan Brown was just a small boy (hard as that is to imagine) when he lived for a few years in Luke Hodge's home town of Colac, but he knows the place and its people. Moreover, he knows how country folk rejoice in the journey of one of their own.

"We all started in the same place," Brown says. "Someone like Hodgey, people have watched his career evolve in front of their eyes, from junior to senior footy, through to the [Geelong] Falcons, and obviously the legend he's become now. People feel like they're attached to his story."

As Brown signs off on one of the great modern careers with a farewell lap of the MCG on Saturday, Hodge takes another step in an equally famous tale, hoping to mark his 250th game with a third Hawthorn premiership and go back-to-back as captain.

Their qualities as players and people overlap, sharing an honesty, strength and loyalty that hark back to a simpler Australia, when poets wrote of bushmen overcoming all before them in a land of rock and scrub.

Brown notes that he is leaving behind a Brisbane Lions list that features many country boys, players who are proud of their heritage and who aren't afraid to tell their urban-reared teammates they've got it over them when it comes to resilience.

"I always say to them, 'We're just a little bit tougher than you are, city boys, we've had it a little bit harder along the way'."

Neither he nor Hodge were raised "on the land", but country folk on farms and in towns celebrate them - perhaps all the more because contemporary AFL can seem overly corporatised, like it no longer speaks their plain language. Against this backdrop, such footballers feel like their people, men they can identify with and celebrate.

Working until recently in security at Melbourne Airport, Hodge's father Bryson encountered footy fans of all persuasions. He couldn't count the number of times someone has said, "Luke Hodge - he's a bloody champion, I wish he played for us."

He knows what it means to people in living rooms throughout the western district when a commentator calls his son "the kid from Colac". "All of a sudden they're getting mentioned on national TV, they're part of the story."

Thirteen years after he left home, Hodge still identifies as strongly with them as they do with him.

Last weekend, Colac won its first premiership since joining the Geelong Football League, and first anywhere for 21 years. President Nick Lang says Hodge was firing off text messages seeking updates right up to leading the Hawks out in the preliminary final against Port Adelaide.

He rang old junior teammates to congratulate them on Sunday - expressing surprise to The Colac Herald at how fresh they sounded the morning after. "But I guess getting close to their 30s, they might have matured a bit."

These are the mates he makes a bee-line for when the AFL season is over; wife Lauren is a Colac girl whose family still lives there, and going "home" is no hardship. "His mates are his mates and he'd do absolutely anything for them," Bryson Hodge says.

Lang says "Blind Freddie" could tell when he was 13 that Hodge would be an AFL star. He credits Hawthorn with smoothing out "some rough edges", but says Hodge deserves huge praise for simply being who he is.

"The great thing about Luke when he comes back is he's part of our community, it's not all about Luke, and you can tell that he loves that. He slides back in, he's just one of the group," Lang says.

"It's that lack of bullshit, if you can say that. The word that comes to mind is honesty. It's something tangible with that link that Luke's got, not just to Colac. It's like Lenny Hayes - everyone loves him. And it just comes back to pretty basic, sheer honesty, I reckon."

David McVeigh played junior footy with Hodge at Colac Imperials in the local district competition, and they crossed at the same time to Colac's under 18s.

Hodge played a handful of senior games that year (2000) - still aged only 15 - finished the season with a Falcons premiership having turned 16, then came back and trained with his Colac junior mates as they chased an under-18 flag (the AFL and TAC Cup seasons finished early due to the Sydney Olympics).

He was qualified to slip back into the team, but his father didn't want him to deny another boy his spot. Bryson Hodge's recall is that McVeigh told the coach, "If Luke plays, we'll win. So I'm not playing."

McVeigh, a significant enough player to have won Colac's goalkicking that season, says it wasn't such an act of martyrdom. "I didn't exactly put my hand up, but I'd have rathered it was me than some of the young kids who'd have been absolutely gutted."

Colac won by a couple of points, courtesy of a Hodge goal from outside 50 in the dying minutes. In the rooms after the game, sporting hair dyed white after the Falcons' triumph, Hodge stood up, made a speech about McVeigh's sacrifice, and gave him his premiership medal.

"It was very, very touching, I was an inch away from tears," McVeigh says. His mate already had a best-on-ground medallion to mark the occasion.

Their bond endures. McVeigh works as a loader operator in the mines, now based at Ballarat; their wives are firm friends, their kids similar ages. When his daughter turned two in June, Hodge brought his two boys up for the Sunday party.

"I had 80-odd people here, maybe five of them barracked for Hawthorn. He went around giving everybody his time. He leaves and everyone's saying, 'Oh my god, he's one of the nicest fellas you could ever meet!'"

"I've never met anyone like him, he blends in so well anywhere. He cares what's going on in the bush, what people are up to. He's got such a good heart, he's just a really, really good human being."

Hodge's hint of larrikin is another universally appealing trait, the sense that he would happily bend the rules just a little without doing any real harm. Three years into his Hawthorn career McVeigh convinced him to spend Saturday afternoons playing cricket for Lorne, perched on the hill above Louttit Bay, taking wickets and making runs as the waves rolled in below.

Mindful of the potential peril to their prized athlete, the Hawks cautioned against it. "He wasn't supposed to bowl," McVeigh says, "but he bowled every week." Any star performances from Lorne's celebrity import were carefully masked in the local paper. Until Hodge made 224 in the final, and the cat was out of the bag.

A few years ago, with the McVeighs living in Bendigo, he goaded Hodge out of retirement for a one-off game. "The whole club was buzzing all week, and he's come up and turned it on, took three or four wickets then made exactly 100."

As the afternoon wore on, cars started ringing the oval like it was footy season, kids in Hawthorn jumpers spilling out of them.

"Hodgey was absolutely stuffed, but he sat there and signed every kid's jumper." Then sat in the rooms for a few quiet beers with new teammates and opponents, of course.

McVeigh is moved that one of a handful of tickets Hodge had for Saturday was this week pressed into his hand. He says he's always wondering, "What can I do for him?", knowing deep down that nothing is expected in return.

Hodge has a special reminder of his cricket exploits, courtesy of little brother Dylan, 12 years his junior, who had photos from that Lorne double century framed as a 21st present for someone his father says he has always idolised. "They're very, very tight," Bryson says.

Dylan Hodge broke an ankle two years ago and missed more footy this year with a fractured eye socket. He attended Geelong Grammar on a cricket scholarship, yet has been nominated for the draft combine by three AFL clubs.

Luke is mentoring him, enlisting a running coach, offering advice. "If he gives it a shot he'll give it 100 per cent," Bryson says. "He's very much like Luke - very pig-headed."

Brown harks back to Hodge's smother in the last minute of the preliminary final in likening him to his old captain Michael Voss, hailing their ability to sense the moment in big games when their team is crying out for an act of leadership and courage. "I think that's been the great strength of Hodgey's career."

People relate to them, Brown reckons, because they don't change. Not that this whole country stereotype is a breeze to live up to.

"We probably feel the pressure a bit of having been in the country - there's some pretty tough leagues out there," Brown says. "When we play, we certainly wouldn't want to pull out or shirk a contest. We'd want to attack the footy in the manner that country footballers are renowned for."

They seem to have managed OK.