Grub. Sore loser. Bad sport. Professional irritant. Biggest dickhead in the game (unofficial twitter poll). Avert the eyes of your children and run "Justin Hodges" through some social media searches. It's brutal, depending in your state allegiance.
Through the NSW prism, those are the traits Hodges brings to the contest. His superpower as a footballer is to hover just within the rules and entice opponents to overstep the boundary. He pushes buttons, winds up, taunts, infuriates ... until something inevitably gives.
Queensland simply see him as a winner. On Wednesday night, while fellow centre Greg Inglis would chug along like a Ferrari missing a tyre, Hodges would not only live up to every stereotype of him as a player, but surpass them all.
He was at his provocative best, riling up NSW with head pats and verbals and treading the finest of lines in his defensive work, pummelling Robbie Farah into the turf in a tackle that would injure the shoulder of the NSW captain.
It wasn't a penalty, nor was he put on report. Instead, Hodges will receive a sternly worded letter from the match review committee to take more care in the future. Meanwhile, the Maroons move to a 1-0 lead in the series as it shifts to the MCG, where Farah is a questionable participant.
Even when Hodges was controversially left out of the Australian team, Mal Meninga had him down as one of his first men selected. At 33, and playing his final Origin series before representative retirement, the Queensland coach considers Hodges indispensable for an Origin campaign.
Conversely, NSW can't wait until he finally shuffles out the door, probably throwing in a signature right step and pinging a hamstring on the way there.
Meninga laughed off suggestions the tackle on Farah was below the belt. The injury was treated at half-time but without a specialist utility in the ranks, Farah had little choice but to play until the conclusion, by which time he'd amassed some 58 tackles at what could be a substantial cost to his chances of lining up for game two.
"Good tackle, wasn't it? I thought it was," Meninga replied when asked about Hodges' fling on Farah. "There was no illegality there at all. That was just an aggressive tackle from someone who wanted to play well."
While his tackle on Farah was telling and the taunt to Hoffman of questionable taste, Hodges made a huge contribution to Queensland's second-half retort with his powerful running from dummy half and thirst for yardage.
Phil Gould was among those to question the desire for work of the NSW outside backs as the big pack fatigued, while Hodges would run up 194 metres for the evening, second only in the match to Maroons winger Will Chambers.
It was a perfect fit to a game plan that assistant coach Michael Hagan would later tell Fairfax Media was lifted straight from the Blues, who had adapted a forward-based strategy over the years at a slippery ANZ Stadium.
"What stands out is the type of game you need to bring to this stadium. It's a much harder place to play at, there's few points scored," Hagan said. "NSW have had that game plan for the last 10 years here, so we had to come here with a bit of a blueprint they've used to try and get ourselves in front."
Hodges may have mellowed off the field as the gray hairs begin to inhabit the side of his head. But his relentless will to win and ability to get under the skin of NSW remain a vital weapon for the Maroons as they try to round out another series victory.
