Based on the fact that Hodge is a “good bloke” and couldn’t avoid the collision, so why not do a sudden upward movement and take Heppell out, not a lot of time to plan, sure, but there was a definite upward movement that resulted in Heppell receiving head contact and being knocked out.
In fact I’ve just looked at it frame by frame, and while Heppell flew towards Hodge with the intention of naively laying a tackle, Hodge very quickly summed up the situation and deliberately laid Heppell out, didn’t miss a beat and went on to contest the ball with Heppell unconscious behind him.
I don’t know whether to be outraged or admire how quickly he took the Jake Melksham to Jarrod Roughead approach to an imminent collision, except at a fraction of the threat to his own wellbeing and 10 times the speed and efficiency to the point people barely noticed.
Here is the frame by frame breakdown:
Okay, here he choses to stop gathering the ball, eyes off the ball and now lining up Heppell, to avoid being tackled with the ball by Hepp who is obviously slowing down to reduce the impact while Hodge is winding up to increase it.