It's Easter, there's a new footy messiah, and the heavens have turned on blue skies for Carlton, writes Greg Baum.
IT'S a popular time of year for saviours. On Easter Saturday, 1965, Ron Barassi played his first game as captain-coach of Carlton after his stunning transfer from Melbourne.
It is a common conceit that football is bigger now than ever, but a sense of scale is important. Long pre-dating health and safety laws, more than 36,000 crammed into tiny Glenferrie Oval that afternoon — a ground record — despite five other simultaneous games, including St Kilda's first at Moorabbin, which drew 51,370. Footy was every bit as big back then as tonight, when Carlton meets Richmond at the MCG.
Carlton won resoundingly, prompting Percy Beames to write in The Age: "The Blues now know with reasonable certainty that the move is going to prove a profitable investment for the club." Three years later, the Blues won their first flag for 21 years.
It is Easter again, Carlton is rumbling again, and Chris Judd arguably is one game ahead of Barassi. Membership is up 6000, corporate backers are queueing and in the merchandising shop, the only ready-made number guernsey is No. 5; it is walking off the shelves. "You could say he's paid his way already," said an old Carlton hand. "The thing is, he offers hope."
That is the least of it. Judd also offers the Blues not only a full set of football decorations, but a command that causes those who meet him to marvel to think that he is only 24.
John Nicholls, who was vice-captain to Barassi at 19, a premiership captain at 22 and became Carlton's ruckman of the century, senses it. "His ability is there for everyone to see," he said. "It's his presence that matters. The club needed some strong leadership, and he's giving us that."
Recently, David Parkin was sitting in a Royal Parade cafe when his interlocutor exclaimed: "Have a look at this!" Entering the cafe was a dozen young Carlton players, fallen in behind their Pied Piper. "Whatever he took off the shelf, they took," said Parkin. "My friend said: 'That's leadership for you'."
Parkin played back pocket for Hawthorn against Barassi and Carlton in that 1965 match, but remembers little about it. He was coach of Carlton when last it trod this path, smuggling Greg Williams out of Sydney in 1992.
The circumstances of the coups were different: the Blues landed Judd because they were so bad, Williams then because they were so good.
Parkin sees timeless similarities, in the players, in their impact. In Carlton's first practice game in 1992, Parkin watched as David Glascott was hit in the head by a Williams handball he was not expecting. "When you think I can't see you," Williams cautioned Glascott, "I can." Three years later, Carlton won the flag, its last.
"What Greg did at that stage, because he was so good at what he did, and so totally and utterly committed to the task, was to have a massive influence on our group's way of thinking," Parkin said. "It's the same now. I'm certain what they're getting is more than a player. It's an outstanding leader and person. It will permeate the whole club."
Plainly, Judd has given back the Blues their vocation and their sense of royalty. For their last practice match, against the Western Bulldogs, 10,000 came to Princes Park, though Judd played only a half.
The least Judd will need in his Moses role is to know his own mind. Reportedly, he does. His reading is a clue: the Financial Review, but not the sports pages, and not The Da Vinci Code when it was first published, because everyone else was reading then, too.
He knows he, too, is being read, for his every thought and deed, but tells associates that it could not be more intense than in Perth, where he had no life outside the football club and so no refuge. Now he is happily hanging his hat at home.
In a sense, the Judd story has outstripped itself. The man had off-season groin surgery and has been carefully nursed; he has not yet played a whole game. Nicholls for one is wary. "He's only played half a game," he said. "I'll wait until he's played six."
Nor does he subscribe to the 1965 parallel. "He (Barassi) didn't change everything," he said. "We already had a good team. Getting Barassi was the extra bit."
The 2008 Blues, founded on ruins, are still evolving, and even with Judd aboard have no guarantees, not tonight against lowly Richmond, not ever. Football fate is especially fickle, Judd as susceptible to injury as any player.
Carlton's line is conservative. "Heaven forbid that anything goes wrong," said an insider, "but even if it does, he's a long-term investment. Besides, you should see him at training: he's a Rolls-Royce."
There it is, the hope, springing eternal. Footy's no bigger than in 1965, but footy hype is.
Stephen Gough was football manager at Carlton when Williams arrived, and later chief executive. Now he is chief executive at the MCG, preparing for at least 60,000 tonight.
Yesterday, Gough's ardour momentarily overwhelmed the diplomatic nicety that ties the chief executive of the MCC to Melbourne. "I'm such a Judd fan — and I'm delighted he's playing for us," he said.
The stage is set. The Blues have their swank and swagger back, and not even the conniptions over Brendan Fevola's latest incontinence can temper it. "I've seen eight flags," said a stalwart. "The ninth will be the sweetest of all."
