What a shabby, squalid, tawdry affair. And in the middle of it is the Blessed One himself, the Brownlow Medallist, Eco Warrior and resident AFL poster boy, Chris Judd.

It was bad enough that Judd had been called before the AFL tribunal to answer a charge of making contact to the face of Brisbane's Michael Rischitelli during Saturday night's elimination final at the Gabba.

But then Judd aggravated his problems ten-fold by making the extraordinary comment the following day that what he was doing was not eye-gouging - oh no - he was actually searching for a pressure point behind Rischitelli's ear. Excuse me - a pressure point? What is this - an audition to become a prison guard at Abu Ghraib? Or did he choose a finals match to try out some patented WWF moves from The Undertaker and Stone Cold Steve Austin?

Then came Carlton's tactical blunder today in trying to clear Judd of the charge. It was a mistake because the video clearly shows him with his hand on Rischitelli's face at the bottom of a pack, if not eye-gouging, then clearly doing something he shouldn't have been doing. Even the most ardent Carlton fan understood how bad the vision looked.

The final indignity for the champion, whom PM Kevin Rudd was matily - and nauseatingly - calling the ‘Juddster' on Saturday, came at tonight's appeal hearing. St Chris, whose word would once have been regarded as gospel, suffered the ignominy of having his evidence mocked.

Judd had argued the contact with Rischitelli was so light that it should have been regarded as too "negligible" to constitute an offence. He also denied that his fingers moving around close to Rischitelli's eye was an attempt to touch him in the eye.

The Blues skipper said he was just having trouble getting a grip on the player's face because it was a muggy night and Rischitelli was sweaty. Why he was trying to get a grip on his opponent's face was not properly explained or explored.

Tribunal counsel Jeff Gleeson said Judd's explanation was "implausible" and it was open to the jury to find a "less benign" explanation. "He doesn't look like a player holding down a head, he looks like a player searching round a face," Gleeson said.

The tribunal didn't take long to find him guilty of making ‘unnecessary and unreasonable contact' to Rischitelli's face, and a three-match ban was the result. He could have accepted a two-game suspension had he entered an early guilty plea, rather than going down the ridiculous appeal route which has had the added effect of prolonging the toxic publicity by one more day.

So, Juddster, whack, biff and wallop. In the space of the 72 hours, your reputation of has taken an almighty battering.

When the great No.5 was charged with eye-gouging Campbell Brown in Tasmania in 2007, we all thought there had been a terrible miscarriage of justice. Our Juddy wouldn't stoop to anything that low, surely. But Brown later revealed he had lied to cover for his opponent, and the Carlton champ's lustre shone a smidgin less brightly.

Judd is a decent person and everyone is entitled to make a mistake. Maybe two. But no longer will we see him as the Sainted One devoid of sin and other earthly shortcomings. He is just another bloke with a particular talent for kicking an inflated pigskin around; nothing more, nothing less.