By Jay Croucher

Does anyone remember Chris Judd? Not even 31, the two time Brownlow medallist has become a football afterthought. After largely being thought of as the best player in the AFL for half a decade, Judd has been deserted by the football world faster than his receding hairline deserted his now bald head. While the AFL is a fickle place, a ‘what have you done for me lately’ league, history will be kinder to Chris Judd. Even if few are paying attention, Judd is quietly concluding his career as an all-time great; one of the most decorated and vividly memorable Australian athletes of all time.

Chris Judd with hair is the single most breathtaking Australian athlete I’ve ever seen. In his West Coast days Judd had the aura that LeBron James and Cristiano Ronaldo have now; where they’re such superior physical specimens that it feels like they exist on a different universal wavelength to their peers. Gary Ablett Jr. is a more complete and ultimately better player than Judd, but even the Gold Coast skipper lacks the element of transcendent athletic devastation that Judd wrought upon the league in his prime.

At West Coast, Judd was impossibly explosive; whenever he got the ball he seemed like he was running downhill and everyone else was running on level ground. He was an insane package of acceleration, agility (oh, the sidesteps), balance and core strength. Aesthetically, what made Judd so special though was his height. While there are smaller players with lower centres of gravities who are similarly explosive (see: Dangerfield, Patrick), Judd was 189cm with long legs and a leanness that belied his strength. Watching him in his West Coast days was like watching an impossibly compact gazelle.

That Chris Judd, the one who kicked goals of the year and would explode from centre bounces into the fifty, effectively died with his groin injury in 2007. Whether it was that specific injury or an accumulation of others, or just age, the Chris Judd of Carlton displayed an explosiveness that was merely ‘elite’ and not ‘transcendent’ like it had been. Carlton Chris Judd ran on flat surfaces just like the rest of the competition. Despite the reduction in athleticism, a strong case can be made that Judd actually became a better football player when he donned the navy blue.

Judd’s shaved head at Carlton served as a symbolic signifier of change, with the new aesthetic matching his grittier style of play. Judd went from being the most devastating outside midfielder in the competition to the best inside one. He’d lost his ability to explode from the contest into space, but retained his remarkable core strength and balance to explode into the contest and win the ball. The stats back up the eye test, as Judd led the competition in contested possessions per game in his Brownlow year in 2010. Compared to his West Coast days, Judd’s disposals, handballs and tackles all went up while his goals and kicks went down. If his 2004 Brownlow was a testament to breathtaking athleticism, then his 2010 one was a recognition of toughness and grit.

In a historical context, if every current AFL player’s career ended today, only two are locks to go down among the game’s transcendent elite; Gary Ablett Jr. and Judd. Adam Goodes and to a lesser extent Nick Riewoldt and Matthew Pavlich are next in line in the discussion, and one day the likes of Selwood, Pendlebury and Franklin will likely join them, but for the time being the discussion begins and ends with Ablett and Judd. Judd’s individual accolades speak for themselves: two Brownlows, two MVPs, six All-Australian selections, five Best and Fairests (two at West Coast, three at Carlton) and he’s one of four players in history to win a Norm Smith medal in a losing grand final. This list of achievements places Judd in rarefied air; on the top shelf of AFL history alongside Carey and the Abletts.

History will likely criticise Judd for a lack of consistent team success. Beyond some unforeseen miracle, Judd will retire having only played in two preliminary finals, a number well short of other recent greats of the game like Carey (7), Voss (5), Hird (5), Ablett Jr. (5) and even Buckley (3). Like Buckley, who spent virtually his entire career elevating mediocre teams by himself, Judd can’t be blamed for those who lined up next to him. It’s not his fault that Brendan Fevola was a head-case or that Ben Cousins liked cocaine.

As has been covered in this space before, the Judd era Blues are a cautionary tale of miscalculations and bad luck. Their failures in September can’t be attributed to Judd. He was dominant in the 2009 elimination final loss to Brisbane (30 touches and a goal) and he was the best player on the ground in the 2010 final defeat to Sydney, with his ludicrous third quarter (10 touches, 6 clearances) one of the all-time great individual quarters of finals football. He can’t be blamed for the short-lived nature of the West Coast era either. The mid-decade Eagles were a potential dynasty ruined by turmoil and deep v-neck t-shirts, things entirely outside of Judd’s control. And while Judd’s teams never tasted consistent tangible success, unlike Buckley, Judd did actually win a premiership. ‘Premiership captain’ will forever be inscribed on his resume.

Judd occupies a strange place in the football world. He’s the most articulate superstar athlete that I can remember. His 96.20 ENTER score is common knowledge among footy fans now. I’ll never forget his Brownlow speech in 2010 when he labelled the AFL a ‘self-indulgent pastime’ and ‘not part of the real world’. While lines like these made Judd a hero to pseudo-intellectuals like me, they also gave the impression that football has never been the overwhelming and sole focus of Judd’s life. Fairly or unfairly this impression has made him less endearing to die-hard fans that have to reconcile the fact that they might care more about the game than he does.

Then there’s the dirty play; the series of bizarre incidents so infamous they’re known by strange monikers that have become synonymous with Judd. There’s the ‘eye-gouge’, the ‘pressure point’ and the ‘chicken wing’, not to mention the elbow of Matthew Pavlich. These inexplicable acts of disturbingly creative violence aren’t enough to overwhelm Judd’s reputation, but they do unfortunately cast a small shadow over his legacy.

I’ve spoken about Judd in the past tense in this piece and that’s not because of lazy grammar. For all intents and purposes Judd is done. There’s still a bald guy who tenses his face a lot running around in a Carlton #5 guernsey but it’s not ‘Chris Judd’. Judd’s athleticism is depleted to the point where his influence on games is minimal now. He was never a great kick, overhead mark or shot for goal, three areas of his game that would have greatly aided the twilight of his career. His strength, size and veteran savvy ensure that he’s still a good AFL player but he’s not Chris Judd anymore.

Given where his body is at and how far Carlton is from contention, it’s not unreasonable to think that we might be watching the final few games of Chris Judd’s career. Even in his diminished state, hopefully football fans will continue to appreciate the fact that they’re watching one of the all-time greats of Australian sport.

I saw Judd in person this year in round 15 when Carlton lost to Collingwood in a dour match emblematic of the seasons both teams are having. He had 27 touches and a goal but little influence on the match. There were however flashes of the old Judd. A little sidestep in traffic or an impossibly clean gather of the ball in congestion; brief moments that harkened back to his halcyon West Coast days, head of hair and #3 on his back, a reminder of the transcendent superstar he once was, and will be remembered as.