Every year when discussing potential draftees, recruits, what have you, we hear: "Classy onballer with slick skills" or similar. But what the hell is class? Is it jus someone who looks good with the ball? Someone who can kick though a hole in a flyscreen from 55 metres? Or just some outside player who never goes in to get the bloody ball?

It's a nothing word. Is Carrazzo classy? Is Murphy? Who decided what's class and what isn't? Consistent performance week in, week out - that's class to me. Flashy skills, getting the ball only 15 times a game, even if you hit every target, it's not what wins games. It's what ices it. Can't kick goals if you don't have the ball.

So - what the hell is class, and who definies what it is?

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Cer 'ch 'n alluog Blues

Class is the same as cool

If you have to ask, you don't need to know

(says someone who isn't either)

What Wayne Carey isn't.

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"Hence you will not say that Greeks fight like heroes but that heroes fight like Greeks"?

Winston Churchill

What Cain Ackland lacks

Form is temporary and class is permanent.

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"our electorate seeks less to be informed and more to be validated." Sad times.

Good composure and awareness, highly skilled by hand and foot.

JUDD.

And GIBBS.

And Murphy.

And hopefully Kreuzer.

Indeed.

Class is difficult to define; it's an instinctual feeling for a football follower as much as anything. One player has set off my Class Radar more than any other in recent times, one with an innate ability to look a bracket above those around him, to set his own agenda, and that's Bryce Gibbs. The name, like Hird and Voss, will be synonymous with class before too long.

Pretty much summed up here.

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"You're not gonna believe this. The guy killed 16 czechoslovakians. He was an interior decorator."

"His house looked like shit!"

What he said!

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1. Walker,
2. Menzel,
3. Murphy,
4. Gibbs,
5. Judd.

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And so while others miserably pledge themselves to the pursuit of ambition and brief power, I will be stretched out in the shade, singing.

I think class can be defined as when a player makes the extraordinary look so simple.

No fuss, no frills - just getting on with the job.

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“It is a state of mind, a system of belief, a way of seeing the world, a deep faith that, because you are Carlton, you belong to something great.” - Mike Fitzpatrick articulating what Out of the Blue means.

Class is Matty Lappin retiring a Bluebagger and not leaving because he didn't like the coach or President.

Or not leaving a club simply for money's sake in the short term, but staying for loyalty to the club and your teammates.

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And so while others miserably pledge themselves to the pursuit of ambition and brief power, I will be stretched out in the shade, singing.

Or struggling through injury only to be cut anyway.

Class is being sacked by a club, and walking away, and not bagging that club, publicly or privately.

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And so while others miserably pledge themselves to the pursuit of ambition and brief power, I will be stretched out in the shade, singing.

Class is being axed by a club and finding anther job.

Class is going to training every session and not being picked, then being named emergency, then being cut, then being picked by another club and playing one game before being dropped to the reserves before being named emergency for the entire finals series before being cut and moving interstate.

No, that's just footy.

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And so while others miserably pledge themselves to the pursuit of ambition and brief power, I will be stretched out in the shade, singing.