THE TRADING CHRONICLES 2007: PRELUDE

THE TRADING CHRONICLES 2007: PRELUDE by the Oracle

THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GROIN

Tomorrow morning it's "game on" for the 16 AFL clubs as they officially return en masse to the bargaining tables to take part in exchange week. The recruiting managers of each club will distribute their lists of tradable and non-tradeable names, haggle over the horse flesh and play the standard game of bluff and bluster in order to acquire and trade players and draft picks. This is all done in the cause of improving your club's playing list as it marches hopefully onwards in its quest for the Holy Grail – an AFL premiership.

Somehow, this year feels different and so it should because unofficially, we've already been through a very public form of horse-trading over the past month. It has come to be known as the "Chris Judd Saga".

Brisbane coach Leigh Matthews got it right when he described the process by which Judd put his suitor clubs through the hoops as "distasteful." I think it was more than just distasteful; it was obscene, crass and pathetic. It demeaned the clubs involved and more importantly it demeaned the major player – Judd himself.

In the beginning, Judd was the blue-eyed wholesome kid who had done the hard yards at his adopted club and wanted to come him to kith and kin. The criteria for his return were laid out in a logical and principled manner. Tick the boxes and he's yours. The boxes included a strong club with excellent values, the best people, good prospects of success, playing on the best grounds and having good facilities going into the future. Of course, we all knew he wouldn't come cheaply but the clubs were prepared to pay the price and besides, who ever mentioned money?

Four clubs, Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon and Melbourne were invited to submit to the process and while Demons were early outsiders, the strength of their presentation and the fact that Judd supported the club as a youngster, suddenly had them up there as favourites for his services. The romantic notion that, in this day of commercialism, a player would go back to the club whose jumper he wore as a kid was seductive and compelling. Then reality suddenly hit and the kid dumped two clubs on the same day – Essendon and Melbourne.

It was like a game of double eviction on Big Brother and it came across as insulting to the clubs that were being evicted one by one. Collingwood fell the following day and the winner was ...

The winner was Carlton, which really ticked none of the boxes when you consider its recent history and the culture it has built up in recent years. The winner was a club that so clearly epitomises failure in its recent past that very few doubt it tanked games in the last half of this season in order to "win" the prize of a priority draft pick which now gives it leverage in the trade battle to win over its new prized possession. The winner was the club that offers the biggest pot of gold and that's what makes the Judd saga so obscene.

Don't get me wrong - the fellow is fully entitled to his full whack. However, things would have been different had it been made clear at the outset that the prize would go to the highest bidder. In any event, the fact that it appears that the winner was more or less preordained has made the process and its main players look decidedly shonky in the eyes of much of the football public.

In the meantime, the rumour mill worked overtime in the fortnight during which Judd was conducting his "selection" process. Players and draft picks were going here, there and everywhere as clubs were allegedly jostling for better positions to enable them to cobble together deals that might be acceptable to the West Coast Eagles if Judd decided to place his faith with them. The speculation as to Carlton's offer however, was fixed on National Draft pick 3 and Josh Kennedy or another player with possibly pick 20 thrown in as a sweetener. The Eagles say they want pick one thrown in but the Blues won't give that away – they want Northern Knights ruckman Matthew Kreuzer. Various plots are being hatched to break the stalemate and we can expect much more of the above in the coming week.

Two years ago, the first trade deal done in exchange week involved Fergus Watt, then a five game player with the Crows, joining the Saints for their first round selection - No.17 overall. At the time I asked the question -

"What price Chris Judd?"

That question is still being asked today.