And he still hadn’t played again and was back in his native Tasmania late in the 1973 season when legendary Hawk coach John Kennedy sent out an SOS.

Hawthorn needed to beat top-of-the-ladder Collingwood to retain any hope of making the finals. Could the unfit and overweight champion spearhead help them do it?

“He (Kennedy) said: ‘I will come down to Tassie to see how you are’,” Hudson recalled last year. “I ran from one end of an oval to the other, blowing like a draught horse, and John said: ‘Ooh, a bit worse than I thought’. I trained for a whole fortnight, flat-out, and then played.”

Not, however, without some logistical complications. Hudson was running a hotel where there was a big gig (Australian comedy sensation Norman Gunston) scheduled for Friday evening.

His plan was to fly-in on Saturday morning and be ferried by helicopter straight to the ground (actually, the nearby police academy). Fog that morning almost scuttled the whole exercise, but after a switch of airline, Hudson and his wife made it.

“As I was brushing my teeth before heading to the airport that morning, there was a phone call from the airline saying fog across the east coast of Australia had closed most airports, and that my flight was postponed and wouldn’t get to Melbourne on time,” he recalled in 2019.

“But they had a plane that had been diverted to Hobart which was flying for Melbourne in 45 minutes and they were happy to take me. So my wife Steph and father-in-law Ted Dillon jumped on the plane with a couple of pilots, five hostesses and nobody else.”

The next hurdle came in the first minute of the game, played in front of 48,312 people, when Hudson jarred his “bad” knee taking off for the ball. “I couldn’t get off the mark after that, and for a while I thought I might have to come off,” he told The Age after the game.

But it didn’t stop him from kicking his first goal after just 90 seconds, a second within five minutes, and three by quarter-time.

An increasingly concerned Collingwood coach Neil Mann tried four different defenders — Jeff Clifton, Lee Adamson, Ross Dunne and Doug Gott — on the champion spearhead to little avail, as Hudson’s goal tally continued to grow.

He had eight by midway through the final quarter as the Hawks drew level with the Pies, and Kennedy’s “hail Mary” was beginning to look like a stroke of genius. Finally, though, the Hawks and Hudson ran out of steam, and Collingwood kicked the final three goals of the game to win by 18 points.

Hawthorn’s finals hopes were ended. But it still didn’t dampen an upbeat mood in the rooms after the game as the Hawks celebrated the return of their prodigal son.

“Things were a little strange early. I wasn’t nervous, but I wasn’t too sure what to expect,” Hudson told The Age. “After five minutes, however, it was as if I’d never been out of the game.”

VFL president Sir Maurice Nathan headed down to the Hawthorn rooms to congratulate the Hawthorn star on his return. And Hawthorn doctor Sandy Ferguson smiled as he bandaged Hudson’s jarred knee.

“His knee was bound to be sore. He hasn’t suffered any more damage. The bandage is only a precautionary measure. I’d say he’ll be able to play next week.” With that, Hudson and his wife Steph left for the airport. As it happened, their flight home was delayed by five hours, and he finally tumbled into bed at 2am.

He wouldn’t return the following week, In fact, after playing the first two games of 1974 before again required surgery to his damaged cartilage, Hudson wouldn’t be back for about three years.

Incredibly, he would make another successful comeback with the Hawks nearly three years later, in 1977, when at the age of 31, he returned again to kick 110 goals, the fifth time in his VFL career he’d done so.

“I went all right. I kicked eight goals, but I reckon five of them came from flukes,” Hudson chuckled last year on the 50^th anniversary of his memorable helicopter ride. “If I’d thought about it, I wouldn’t have done it. It turned out all right.”

For Hudson, for the Hawks, and for the concept of helicopter travel for emergencies.

You can read more of Rohan Connolly’s work at FOOTYOLOGY.