Thank you for coming. By now, you would have heard reports of a new apex predator living in the centre square. The creature is now launching close to 8.8 clearances a game. More than Kennedy, more than Dangerfield, more than anyone.
A five-tool player has awareness, clean hands, damaging disposal, burst speed and strength. Gary Ablett Jr had five tools. Chris Judd had five. Dangerfield — five also. Patrick Cripps has four. When he has five, like the others, he will be untaggable. We have tried to kill him, but our numbers are already thinning. Our best strategy is to study him, to understand him.
Egg Stage
In 1995, French President Jacques Chirac announced the resumption of nuclear tests in French Polynesia. The after-effects in Australia were then unknown, unknowable. That same year, Patrick Cripps was born in an isolated farm in Northampton. This may have been coincidence.
Three years later, baby Patrick was riding a motorbike. He was driving a car by five years old. You may dismiss that spatial awareness and hand-eye co-ordination as unremarkable for a human. For context, at three years old most children master utensils. But during his junior years Patrick Cripps didn’t register on any recruiting heat map — he was the shortest player in his under-15 side. A fan of West Coast legend Chris Judd, a career in top flight football was something to be observed, not planned for.
Larval Stage
Google ‘nuclear animals’ and you get two-headed cows, eight-legged lambs. Radiation does ungodly things to farm animals. But what does radiation do to the farmer? Over two years, Patrick Cripps grew twenty centimetres, a figure seldom seen outside of medical journals. The bigger Cripps was now striding into stoppages and emerging with the ball, two screaming teenaged opponents hanging off him. He was now a three-tool player: strength, hands and awareness. He crept into second-round draft predictions.
Meanwhile, in the big leagues, a new type of midfielder was emerging. Tall, strong-bodied war machines like David Mundy and Josh P. Kennedy were mugging smaller players and firing handballs to quicker, more damaging ball-users on the outside. If you didn’t have all five tools, you could crowdsource them.
Someone had to read the tea leaves. Under-fire Carlton list manager Shane Rogers took Patrick Cripps with a first round pick (13), a rare flash of Carlton ingenuity. Two years later, that same sense of adventure nets Rogers and Carlton another left-field choice, mature-aged winger Blaine Boekhorst, and shortly after, a cardboard box to remove his belongings from work. Wherever Shane Rogers is, I hope he has found happiness.
Pupal Stage
The statue of Chris Judd will show him grimacing, arms raised with the ball, bursting clear from the pack. This is peak Judd. Patrick Cripps’ teammate is trough Judd. His body — 88 kilograms of hanger steak and shoulder tape, had been violated by twelve years of football. He was improbably still Carlton’s best player. Two top draft picks, Marc Murphy and Bryce Gibbs, had both failed to pull the sword from the stone. The king was dying, heirless.
Meanwhile, Patrick Cripps spent his debut season burrowing to the bottom of midfield packs, exhausted. He had found some success in the VFL, but had struggled for form in the faster-pace of the top level. A month after debut, he would break his fibula and miss most of the season. If anything, Carlton recruiting was at least known for its consistency.
At a post-season review, it was decided — somehow Cripps was going to be the future, but not in his current form. He would need to get leaner and faster. Cripps returned to the farm and worked with a sprint coach. He returned four kilograms lighter, significantly quicker and inexplicably, a few centimetres taller. He now had four tools.
Adult Stage
Spending more time with his childhood hero, Cripps was now combining his peripheral vision and rifling handballs with a rough rendition of Chris Judd’s trademark move — arms raised with the ball, hightailing it out of congestion. In Judd’s final season (2015), Cripps would average 6.65 clearances; Judd 5.75. Cripps would go on to win Carlton’s best and fairest in his second season of football. The sword was out of the stone.
In the background, Carlton would do Carlton things. Finals were missed. Coaches started circling the drain. Woodens were spooned. Judd’s body would finally give out mid-season, a torn ACL ending his career abruptly. Wherever Chris Judd is, I hope he has found peace.
????? stage
Patrick Cripps is currently the number one clearance player in the AFL (8.8 per game), ranked second overall for contested possessions (16.9). His main rival in most statistical categories is the beast Josh P Kennedy, seven years older and a veteran of 144 games. Unlike Kennedy, Cripps is apparently still growing.
We have no idea what form he will take next. We just know, that at 21 years old and merely 44 games in, he will continue to evolve. If he manages to find an elite ball-user consistently, he could form part of a formidable power duo. Like Dangerwood, or Kimye. If he pushes into the forward line, he could become a contested ball-winning tall forward, a Carlton version of Nathan Fyfe, which is underwhelming. Liam Jones is the Carlton version of Buddy Franklin.
If he develops his entry inside the 50m arc, he will become a 194cm inside midfielder with all five-tools — a god, for all intents and purposes. An untaggable monster.
