Demons Activated In Chase For Superstar

The Age

Thursday September 20, 2007

Jake Niall

There are few players on the Melbourne list whom the club would not give up to get their hands on Chris Judd.

IN 1964, after the Demons won their last premiership, the competition's biggest-name player and premiership captain left the Melbourne Football Club. Tomorrow, they will get a chance to pitch for this era's answer to Ron Barassi, Chris Judd.

The Demons are outsiders in the Judd race, and they alone of the four contending clubs are not a Victorian powerhouse. They don't have Richard Pratt, Eddie McGuire or Essendon's millions, and in all likelihood, they won't get Judd, who appears to have a slight preference for Collingwood, but is favoured to end up at Carlton because of that club's pole position in the national and pre-season drafts.

Back in grand final week last year, Andrew Demetriou said "the sky's the limit" in terms of the interest Judd might generate at a Victorian club. I suspect that if the AFL bosses could arrange it, their preferred club for Judd would be the Demons.

Think about what Judd might do for Melbourne, as opposed to the Blues, Bombers and Magpies. Melbourne is a club that suffers from a crisis of identity, and over the past two decades, has resembled those impoverished English aristocrats who are forced to sell the manor: It has the title, but no dough.

The Demons are a problem club for the AFL. Whereas the league can push the Kangaroos to the Gold Coast and prop them up, Melbourne, by dint of its name and history, can't be shifted. Mergers aren't so fashionable as they were in 1996, when Melbourne almost swallowed Hawthorn whole. Melbourne has no such quick fix available today.

Melbourne needs a shot of adrenaline to the heart - a fact the club recognised this when it flirted with Kevin Sheedy. If Judd was willing to join the Demons, the club would regain some of the cachet and self-esteem that have steadily ebbed, like sand from the hourglass, since Barassi went to Carlton - a defection, incidentally, that was instrumental in Carlton supplanting the Demons as a superpower.

Carlton is on the mend, and should be restored to a position of insufferable arrogance over the next few years. Judd would only expedite an inevitability. The Magpies and Bombers will be fine, without or without Judd.

For Collingwood, the appeal is primarily on-field - by injecting class and explosiveness into its midfield, Judd could be the difference between fourth and first (assuming Geelong wins tomorrow night). Essendon also sees him in on-field terms, given that its midfield is slower than its search for a coach.

If Judd would replace Nathan Buckley and James Hird at Essendon as the icon of those clubs, he would actually give Melbourne a player of that stature for the first time since Robert Flower. Garry Lyon was not quite at that level. David Schwarz might have been if not for his wonky knee.

Judd can deliver what the joint acquisition of Kelvin Templeton and Peter Moore couldn't, despite Moore's second Brownlow in 1984.

Go down to the local Auskick clinic, in virtually any suburb, and you'll find that red and blue jumpers are among the least populous. In the unlikely event that Melbourne landed Judd, I predict a trickle of Demon No. 3s (guessing he would take his current number, which once belonged to Lyon) suddenly sprouting.

The growth would not be as dramatic as the loss of No. 31 jumpers post-Barassi, but it would give Melbourne a charismatic appeal to youth that it has not had since, yes, 1964.

Some delusional Melbourne supporters cling to the fact that Judd grew up barracking for the Demons, when his boyhood allegiance counts for close to zilch. But the club does have some selling points.

One is the MCG, another is the fact that the Demons are certain to put together a deal that can satisfy the Eagles. Pick four would be part of the compensation, with the Eagles understood to be keen to recruit a young West Australian. Whereas Collingwood and Essendon have shown a historic reluctant to part with quality players, there are few on the Melbourne list whom the club would not give up for Judd.

As a finalist from 2004-06, Melbourne's list is better than results this year suggest. Statistically speaking, it was the hardest hit by injuries of all clubs. The list is solid. What it lacks is a long-term replacement for David Neitz, and a superstar.

If Melbourne does not have the profile and dollars of the big three, at least the club has shown the enterprise to put together an advisory group for the purpose of attracting better players and people to the club; even if, as I expect, Judd goes elsewhere, the advisory group has been activated.

The Demons can make the deal happen. The hard part will be convincing Judd.