The Age wrote:

He was actually knocked out twice in separate incidents in a game (versus Brisbane at the SCG, 2010), a dubious honour. Brad Ottens almost drove his knee through Jude's head at Geelong one day when he ran back with the flight of the footy, the equivalent of going blindfolded onto a freeway.

As a family member, it's the moment you dread. I cussed under my breath; I can't begin to think what was going through his parents' heads as he lay on the turf. But he got up, wobbled around and found his way to the bench. Twenty minutes later he was back in the fray and kicking a goal.

At one point, Jude went six years without missing a game, which is quite something when you factor in a kamikaze playing style. In 2005, when Sydney won the flag, he separated his shoulder joint with a month to go in the season. You could poke the end of your finger into that joint; Jude could not put on his seatbelt in the car or sleep on that side. The medicos told him that it needed to be pinned, wiping out the season. Alternatively, he could try to play on painkillers and keep it a secret. He kept playing, getting his skull crushed in the grand final so that blood spewed out into his blonde hair.

Jude does a good line in denial of injuries. When he hyper-extended his ''good'' right knee this year, he tore both cruciate ligaments. When I saw him in the rooms he was unfailingly optimistic: ''We'll be right.'' Three weeks later, he was back playing. That's why I sometimes call him the Black Knight, from the Monty Python film. ''It's just a flesh wound …''

Jude became a very good player, but people had trouble placing him. He was not, for instance, a Chris Judd or a Gary Ablett, yet he had something. I prefer to look at what he is, rather than what he is not. For instance, he has laid more tackles than any player in AFL history (currently 1389). He is an amazing tackler, owner of the league record of 19 in a single game (versus West Coast, 2011).

He can also win the football. His 26 contested possessions against Essendon in 2010 at the SCG was a record at the time. As Rodney Eade observed, he is a ''see-ball, get-ball player'', good enough to draw a tag from the best stoppers, like Cameron Ling, when he was at the height of his career.

If the season was 18 games and not 22, Jude might have won two or three Swans best and fairest awards and a couple of all-Australian gongs. But the hits and concussions took a toll on him around August each year. As Ling once observed: ''When you play against him, you know you're going to come off in some pain.''

Unlikely wrote:

RUH ROH?

Skerret wrote:

There's no return in reading of listening to the opinions of football journalists.  There is a small handful of journos who not only have a talent for writing, but can also pair that ability to actual insight.

The rest are hacks and were they writing on any other topic, they'd be barely able to land a job at the Heidelberg Leader.  Mark Robinson is a prime example.  The man is a bloated, whingeing alcoholic who uses words that he does not know the meaning of, bases his ravings on airy fairy bullshit of his own making and ensures any meaningful discussion of the sport degenerates into nostalgic, dribbling bombast.

The football media have goldfish memories and do not understand the sport they report on (Tony Shaw being the worst offender).  It's embarrassing.  The most interesting insight comes from those just out of the game or, better yet, still in it.  The tactical nous of the majority of football commentators is woeful.  They literally do not understand what is going on out there. Yes, they know what it's like to compete, give some lip and cop it, carry an injury and win or lose, but beyond that they are as clueless as those two moustachioed Hawk supporting monstrosities that hurl abuse at everyone about everything from the fence.

Gerard Whately and one or two others, possibly Parkin, know how to handle themselves.

On the Crows, they've got a sniff of old Geelong about them.  Very attacking, tough, some star runners, a better forward line but inferior back line.  They could be the next super team.  Pies are shot, their 'dynasty' didn't amount to much.