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I wish I may, I wish I might
Have this wish I wish tonight
I want that star, I want it now
I want it all and I don’t care how
I never warmed to the new bloke in number five. I suspect he never truly warmed to us either.
However as I reflect on a love for this club that is all but vanished, I can’t help bit attribute the peaks of my fandom and support of this club to the times almost exclusively manufactured by one C. Judd that felt as if it were at the behest of the opposition but at times teammates as well.
I remember the day he chose us. Just days before my 21st birthday came the finalisation of a decision process akin to determining the new pontiff. The Navy Blue smoke wafted from the Princes Park chimney and confirmed that our facilities, our list, our presentation, our large cheque, our clean environmentally friendly living had bested those offered by rival Victorian clubs and our time as cellar dwellers was all but over.
I couldn’t remember an opposition player I idolized so much from afar. I remember reading his articles n The Age in my final year of high school. The alternative ways that Qatar measure their GDP? Yeah, sure, count me in. That silly flava-sava facial hair thing that I’ve only just noticed via Google Images search he hasn’t donned in years? Despite the better efforts of Shannon Noll, I’m on board. Bursting through packs like Juddy in a packed pub on Grand Final Day 2006 whilst holding a round of pints and destroying everyone else’s? I deserved that head kicking.
Flags were but a mere formality from here, we put aside our scepticism over the state of his groins, the amount of money on the table and proceeded to create our own trophy cabinets and annual leave requests for the first week of October in anticipation of the premierships to come.
I’ve never attended a practice match just to see one player, let alone put my life on hold (creative excuses were made for my absence from both work and my uni study group that day) in anticipation of such a huge occasion. “That” opening passage of play lives on in my mind from that day, complete with Wonder Years-esque voice-over:
As Judd ran round the back of the first pack to receive the handball, deliver one off in kind, raced around a second pack to receive the ball again, gave off another handball, only to then lurk off back in the goalsquare for a breather that never came as his teammates needed him as a bailout option, I realized everything was going to be just fine. As the crowd roared Ole! I felt they realized it too. A practical means of interpreting the team that “never lets you down as any”. Safe as bank interest. Dependable. Reliable.
I’ve never seen a reserves or a VFL match just to see one player either. Yet here we are again six years later in 2014, hopes dimmed; the messiah glow all but faded. Because it represented that maybe we were back on the right track, if Juddy wasn’t above playing in the twos to get it right. An embarrassment in practicality as a not-quite-right Juddy still did what he liked around journeyman and skinny kid alike.
I know why we never warmed to him as we did, lets say, Diesel Williams, who joined the Blues in similar circumstances. You can’t have a beer with Juddy. I was however, fortunate to have a Jaegerbomb or two with him on a Mad Monday once, his first at Carlton, at a now long forgotten Carlton watering hole where a bloke arrived fashionably later than the rest of his teammates, wearing ripped jeans and shirt and a gimp mask, proceeded to neck his two Jaegerbombs and headed straight to the toilets to bring them straight back up to the bemusement of all and sundry. It was un-Juddlike. But it was enjoyed by all as someone letting their guard down after a tougher first year than he had probably anticipated, rather than someone pretending to be what they weren’t.
In hindsight, whilst never a Fevola people person, he was still smart enough to not pretend he was something he wasn’t publicly, a traditional footy lad in amongst a team of the most self-interested t-shirt designers and budding hair models.
That we never got “West Coast” Judd may have been a factor also. That we never truly saw the dynamic, quicksilver Judd that burst through packs at break neck speed, that kicked goals on the run from any and all stoppages, the offensive weapon that revamped how we viewed the modern midfielder. If “West Coast” Judd was Ziggy Stardust, we got the Thin White Duke version. No longer ground breaking and revolutionary, we saw Judd take up the duties of another man’s craft, one often criticized as lacking from his art, and whilst he never revolutionized it, certainly did it as well as anyone else if not better at the time. It’s an idea that makes me want to put on a copy of the highlights of the 2010 Brownlow winning year, put Young Americans on over the top, and see how well they gel if nothing else.
Despite not a traditional Carlton character by any stretch of the imagination, today highlights his ability to have lived the better part of the values upheld by the Carlton Football Club throughout its history, but simultaneously provoking the need to re-evaluate the need for them to be revitalized in today’s light, given the loss of what is essentially the Club’s only link to the modern game. The one whose professionalism and approach to preparation has never been at doubt whilst we mistakenly looked to hold him to account for promises of glory and restoration that he never made.
I often equated some of the highlights of Judd’s career as akin to having not overcome a school bully, but, rather having paid a bigger bully to take them out instead. The first win in Sydney in over 20 years during which he obliterated Sydney’s midfield single-handedly? The elimination final win against Richmond? The demolition of Essendon* in 2011? They all provoked a sense of where we had come from, and greedily where we should be heading, rather than any sense that required the moment to be basked in. They were not so much achievements as they were survival due to the hard work of another tribe.
These are but many of the reasons or way of thinking that will see Judd’s last 8 years never receive the appreciation they deserve. A giant asterisk reminding us of 0 flags that he never promised us. A greater culture of nothingness that not even a champion such as Judd could overwhelm or beat into shape no matter the best of intention or effort. A miserable exit from the game on Saturday that can be contextualised in the sense that if there were only 12 at the Last Supper, 5 at the murder of Julius Caesar and Archimedes died alone in the bath, that the deserved exit for Chris Judd was not a nothing game against an interstate club at a quarter-full MCG.
As it stands today, the whole ride feels hollow and we have little to show for it, but know full well that its one that won’t be replicated in a hurry. I’d kill to have another player that I tried so hard to not like so unsuccessfully.
_________________
BLUES 2010: PAV AND JUDD = FLAGS. DOING IT FOR THE LOVE OF DICK PRATT.
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