Gold Coast’s job in bringing down the reigning premier has been made that much harder with Hawthorn expected to regain the services of 2013 premiership captain Luke Hodge for Saturday night’s clash at Metricon Stadium.

The Hawks’ inspirational leader trained strongly on Tuesday morning, but will still need to be assessed further before getting the all-clear from the club’s medical staff. 

Hodge was missing in action from the Hawks’ 58-point demolition of Fremantle at the MCG last Friday night, after injuring his groin during his side’s round two encounter with Essendon.

While a final decision will be made on Thursday, Hawthorn’s General Manager of Football Operations, Chris Fagan, fully expects his team’s skipper to lead the Hawks in this weekend’s contest.

“It’s pleasing to report he trained this morning and got through training well,” Fagan told hawthornfc.com.au

“As long as he pulls up ok and trains well on Thursday, we expect Luke to be available for selection.”

Gold Coast big man Tom Nicholls could face the mammoth task of nullifying both Ben McEvoy and David Hale in the ruck, with the former also set to undergo a fitness test alongside Hodge on Thursday.

“He’s (McEvoy) in a similar vein to ‘Hodgey’; he didn’t quite do as much at training as what Hodgey did but again, we’ll put him through a test on Thursday and see how he comes up,” Fagan said.

“… ‘Haley’ just copped a bit of a stinger on his shoulder in his 200^th game.  Iit looked a bit dramatic there for a while but he was able to return to the field and has recovered from the game really well.

“He was able to train today so we expect him to be out there on Saturday night.”