‘I didn’t know what high performance was’: What Judd taught Cripps

Judd was entering the twilight of his honour-studded career as Cripps arrived. If they had different styles – Judd a far quicker inside-and-outside threat, Cripps a pure contested beast – their resumes at Carlton are comparable, with an aggregate of seven best and fairests, two Brownlows and 11 years of captaincy. No flags as yet.

Further, Judd and Cripps have been standard-bearers for Carlton, each midfield gun having come from the west determined to excel as individuals but also to uplift the “Old Dark Navy Blues” to their former grandeur.

Cripps, a country boy who’d been boarding at a private school in Perth, had broken his leg twice in three years, including his vexed first season. At the end of his first campaign, he sat down with the ex-skipper (Judd handed the captaincy to Marc Murphy in 2013) to absorb the wisdom of the elder statesman.

“I was just so raw in my first year. I really didn’t know what high performance was, so you come from a small country town, boarding school, to the AFL. You had to make some big changes. So it probably took me a year how to be a pro,” Cripps recalled, explaining how Judd, with Andrew Walker and Murphy had modelled habits for him.

“But I had some great guys around who helped me with that. He was one of them.”

Cripps observed how the Brownlow medallist set up his day with a routine and how he would regularly have breakfast with Judd.

“He used to always do a 15 to 20-minute touch session in the morning, touch session with a group ... that was just his way to make sure he was getting in touch with the footies,” Cripps said.

“We used to catch up every couple of weeks for brekkie just to check in and just to keep working on my game and give me little pointers.

“I think he got a bit more relaxed as he got older. But he just went to extremes to get the best out of himself. You know, I feel like a lot of the best players do that.

“He was a good guy to learn off, that’s for sure mate.”

Judd’s first impression of Cripps was to be staggered by the teenager’s leviathan size for a midfielder, reaching 195 centimetres – likely the biggest to play, successfully, as an inside midfielder in AFL history.

“He was raw ... he was massive for a mid, that was striking, and such a brilliant kid and I remember Greg Swann – he was CEO at the time he got drafted – sort of said that he would captain the club,” Judd told me.

“He was a huge mid but certainly running capacity-wise he paid for that. But was always such a brilliant kid and showed great leadership skills even from day dot – some of the early things that caught everyone’s attention.”

Having entered his 30s and not keen on coaching, Judd wanted to impart his distilled knowledge to the eager student. By 2015, Cripps’ second season and Judd’s last, the youngster who admits he knew little about how to train or eat had morphed into a more athletic specimen.

“And I remember sitting down with him after his first year and just trying to ram home how players and teams that have good seasons are born out of a good preseason and a good preseason really revolves around a good eight- to 10-week off-season ... and how you’re not going to get rapid improvement out of doing the exact same work as everyone else.

“With rigour in his off-season, I think he got a sprints coach and formulated a plan and did a heap of work and just looked ... athletically completely different after a two- or three-month block. When a lot of players use that holiday to relax and unwind, he was using that to work his butt off.

“You could see the results really rapidly after that three-month window and he’s just gone from strength to strength since then.”

There’s a fair amount of mutual admiration between the midfield champs. Cripps, as a child, had watched Judd “bursting from stoppages” and booting five goals in a half against the Lions (in 2003). He expressed his gratitude thus: “Not too many players get to play with a player they look up to – I was pretty lucky in that regard.”

Judd, for his part, reckons Cripps has been superior in 2024 to his Brownlow season of 2022. He highlights Cripps’ remarkable consistency of performance in the face of a game-style that involves many dents to his body.

“I mean, his season has been unbelievably good, and I think better than his Brownlow year. To bash and crash like he does, week in and week out, for such a long period, you would’ve thought he’d be starting to use up his tickets. And I’m sure he’s sore at this stage of the year,” Judd said.

“Yeah, it’s quite incredible how consistent he’s been given how he plays.

“That’s been as impressive as anything he’s done – that ability to do it every single week. It’s a huge effort.”

Cripps had absorbed that Judd did the little things to preserve his body. The successor would plan accordingly, well before his 30th birthday, to give himself a better shot at longevity.

“I’ve always tried to think ahead of the curve and think like you want to be proactive now that will pay me back once 30 sort of approaches – and it’s approaching pretty quick now.”

While Cripps witnessed Judd’s combination of light-hearted banter and serious standard-setting, Judd – who would later serve as football director on the club board – viewed Cripps, too, as a skipper who blended obsessive professional rigour with warmth and care.

“He’s got time for everyone, and he finds that balance between being really obsessive at his craft and being warm and a real people-person, which is often rare. Often those guys that are really strong in drive and work ethic, they’re not as strong in relationships, but he’s one who’s able to cross that junction.”

Cripps politely dismisses the view that he’s carrying an excessive load this season, calling this a narrative from outside, when the players see the midfield as a group who share the burden. And he reckons the Blues showed positive signs in the post-siren loss to Collingwood last weekend.

“I feel like every game we’ve had a chance to be in it, apart from one game this year that got blown out and that was against Sydney ... it’s just small stuff. We feel our game on the weekend, we feel like it was some of our better footy from the last month. We still take a lot of confidence and belief out of that.”

Judd, whose version of the Blues made finals three times consecutively but never reached the top four, feels that Cripps – who did not see finals in his first nine years at Royal Parade – helms a group comparable to the long-dormant and ultimately dominant Tiger teams led by Trent Cotchin.

Judd says Cripps was part of a constellation of five or so stars – Jacob Weitering, Charlie Curnow, and Harry McKay plus Sam Walsh – that kept his faith to remain with the club.

“I suspect that’s what’s kept him so engaged and kept him around,” Judd said.

“Now, you just hope he gets to play finals as the skipper of a top-four type team, and you could see that this year for most of the year that’s how it’s looked, and last year. You do feel this group could enjoy that sort of period that Carlton fans were used to from the mid-’90s and prior to that.

“It felt like it was taking forever for Richmond to really get there, don’t you think? There was improvement. You looked at that list and you had [Alex] Rance, [Jack] Riewoldt, Cotchin and [Dustin] Martin and maybe [Shane] Edwards was in that group ... there was always that core five players who were really at the top end.

“I guess that’s the blue sky for Paddy and the Blues.”

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