As you said I believe it certainly relates to how the team plays and the other players in the team (what are the strengths) .
At a starting point you would want a consistent passer who reads the game well, is a strong communicator and kicks accurately in general play. As a base level. On top of that I'd want a strong defender, agility and acceleration, a long pass, a long boot and consistency across all aspects of their game. The kind of player you see make a mistake and cannot remember the last time they did it.
For mine, Hodge doesn't tick a lot of those boxes.
I will say that Hodge would suit a 10 man rugby style very well. As I said in a previous post that if he just sits in the pocket and kicks to corners, carries strongly and tackles well he would fit that mould of 10. Particularly with a playmaker 9. However this is not the style of rugby I want to see the Wallabies play. There is a time and a place for it and our game plan should have balance however I don't think we could get that balance right with Hodge at 10.
I'm definitely playing devil's advocate here.
The player we all think is our first choice 10 tried to offload just outside our try line in the opening minutes of the game. His highlights were holding up a pass nicely to put Petaia in for our first try but realistically this wasn't anything amazing. We had front foot ball metres out from the try line.
The other good play was the big break he made down field. We didn't look great in that first half.
In terms of the style we play, does being slightly less aggressive in our own half and playing field position more give us a better chance of scoring more tries and playing more attacking rugby?
We threw the ball around a lot against England and scored 3 tries, 2 tries and 2 tries across the 3 tests. Our attack wasn't sparkling in any way (aside from probably the Tom Wright try in the third test).
I think all our 10s should be playing a similar game and it should be closer to how we played with Hodge at 10 against the Pumas than Lolesio against England. We'll score more tries and be happier with our attack if we do that because we'll put ourselves in a better position to use it.
Forward runners in the middle of the field were largely absent against England. We need more of that.
