Chris Judd is the best player I’ve seen since Darrel Baldock, still ahead of the young pretenders, Ablett II and Big Buddy.

Or perhaps that should be the best since Ian Stewart, if the way Judd performed in the first 10 minutes of the last quarter against the Saints last Friday night, playing the role of the good old-fashioned centreman, is the yardstick.

Take your pick. Judd can get the ball in close and deliver it with precision to teammates out into the open spaces, by either hand or foot, the way triple Brownlow medallist Stewart did. And his mind is as sharp as the Doc’s, giving him that extra split second to decide on an option.

Baldock and Stewart, both out-and-out champions, were certainly a potent force when Ian Drake’s Tassie Foreign Legion stole the flag from Collingwood for the Saints in 1966.

Those few minutes of Judd’s last Friday night dragged the Blues from oblivion to within seven points against the Saints. But it all came to nothing when he left the field for a well-earned rest and his teammates fell in a collective hole. They should have gone on and won the game from there.

None of Judd’s marvellous attributes, though, could have enabled him to kick the ball when he was flat on his face, as an umpire told him he should have done when he got pinged for holding the ball in one of the worst umpiring decisions this season.

The best outcome would have been a play-on call, because the ball was jolted from the one hand he had free when the tackle was made.

On the other side of the coin, the umpires generally deserve a pat on the back for putting away the tiggy-touchwood interpretation of 50-metre penalties that was in vogue early in the season.

Too often a player going for a spoil was being pinged for the slightest touch on the man taking the mark if he was even a fraction of a second late.

The current reading of the rule seems to be more in touch with its original intention, to stop time-wasting, either by going over the mark, not giving the ball up quickly enough or starting an argument with the umpire.

I reckon the worst rule interpretation at the moment is when a player is run down and tackled from behind.

Nine times out of 10 he gets penalised for holding the ball or incorrect disposal, even though, as Foxtel’s On The Couch panel pointed out on Monday night, he manages to get a boot to the ball as it falls from his hands, which should be play on.

Rarely is the tackling player pinged for a push in the back, which he should be if his tackle forces the player with the ball to fall forwards. Occasionally the bloke with the ball does get the call in these situations, but that’s how it should be paid every time – the tackled player gets the free if he’s ridden forward.

The second-worst umps’ call, happening far too often, comes when a player on his knees, or on his way down, while going for the ball is grabbed over the shoulder with one arm while the tackler shoves the ball under him with the other.

If the unlucky bloke making the play happens to fall over, chances are he’ll be done for lying on the ball while the earlier free for the high tackle escapes notice.

Let’s hope the ball-players get the protection they deserve when Geelong and the Western Bulldogs meet on Saturday.

What a corker that’s going to be.

It’s a pity Cameron Ling will be missing after last weekend’s Battery at the Cattery, but I fancy the home-ground advantage, which is enormous down there, will get Geelong home.

Just.

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