Ask Alan Judge about his nickname “the Irish Messi” and the diminutive figure from south Dublin tries to put you off the scent.
“That was just a commercial thing by Notts County on the last day of the season. They wanted to make a bit of money so they sold green jerseys with ‘The Irish Messi’ printed on it. Nobody consulted me,” Judge says with a shrug of his shoulders. However, there is more to the hyperbole than that. In the January transfer window, Judge’s growing reputation and impressive goal haul this season was enough for his present club, Brentford, to slap an £8m price tag on his head, though in the end Judge wasn’t for moving.
“There were talks here and talks there, but I sat down with my agent and decided it would be best if I stayed till the end of the season at least. I had two things on my mind. I had only just had a baby boy. It is very hard to move your family when you have a two-year-old and a one-month-old baby, and I was thinking of the European Championships and playing week in, week out here.
“I have had a good start to the season and I wanted that to continue. I needed to prove that it was no fluke. Nobody is going to pay £8m for me, after two or three good months. Hearing those price tags is nice, but I am realistic.”
Now seven months into the season, a haul of 14 goals so far in the Championship, scored from an attacking midfield position and usually of the spectacular variety, means Judge will not only be named in Ireland’s squad on Friday for the friendlies later this month, but is pencilled in for his first senior cap.
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The Ireland manager, Martin O’Neill, who lives nearby, has been a regular presence at Griffin Park to witness Judge’s exquisite skill and expertise from dead-ball situations which have at times electrified the old ground in west London. O’Neill has been one managerial constant in Judge’s life this season, with the club initially in chaos after the sacking of Mark Warburton, but it says much for Judge’s singlemindedness that he has prospered first under Marinus Dijkhuizen, then Lee Carsley and now Dean Smith.
“I was devastated,” Judge says of the departure of Warburton, now managing Rangers. “Mark was the reason I came here. He got the best out of me and I think my form this year is down to the way he let me play last year. The managers who have come in since have carried that on. At the moment everything I hit is going in the net.”
Goal scoring and assists have always been the main part of Judge’s game and he has excelled at both, albeit mostly in the lower leagues after Sam Allardyce made it clear to him at his first English club, Blackburn Rovers, that he was surplus to requirements because he was too small.
“Earlier on in my career it [his height] held me back, but not now. If you look at most of the teams they have somebody who is 5ft5in, 5ft6in. Allardyce now has got Jermain Defoe playing up front and Martin O’Neill has got Wes Hoolahan playing in there in the same position as me.”
Judge’s ability to drive at defences gives him something which Hoolahan doesn’t have, but for the moment he knows his place. Initially on the stand-by list, Judge has been first promoted by O’Neill to the Ireland squad and then made it on to the bench for the playoffs against Bosnia in November. Inevitably, he also has a Roy Keane story to tell, and it is one which bears repeating.
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“When I first joined up with the Irish team, Roy Keane came straight towards me in training. I could see him coming from a distance and I was thinking to myself ‘what do I say’? I said ‘good morning’ and he just said straightaway ‘do you know why you are here’? I was kind of stuttering. I said ‘I must be doing ok’. And he said ‘yeah, you are doing very well’. They keep relaying that message to me. All I can do is keep doing what I am doing.”
Should he continue to prosper, he will meet his targets, which are 18 goals by the end of the season and assists well into their double figures as well. Partner Emma provides assists as well, allowing him get the rest which means he can get through the gruelling Championship schedule which often throws up three games in eight days. An amiable and self-effacing man, Judge’s 27th year is turning out to be a great time in his life and he deserves his success. He and his family back in Shankill in south Dublin know all about the downside of playing the game — he talks of the guidance he receives from his father, Dermot, who captained Bray Wanderers to their 1990 FAI Cup triumph, and is now suffering mobility problems because of a long-standing knee problem.
Judge has had enough knock-backs in his own career both for club and country since leaving St Joseph’s Boys club for Blackburn as a 15-year-old. His first call up to the Irish set-up at that age turned out to be a case of mistaken identity which knocked him badly and probably helps explain why he is not getting too carried away at the prospect of earning his first Ireland cap. He is, however, not booking any summer holidays for June as he tries to squeeze his way into that 23-man Euros squad.
After that, with only one season left on his contract at Brentford, all bets are off. “I don’t think there is going to be talks. What I am getting from my end is that there has been no contact from them. There was something in the summer where they wanted to renegotiate, but that ended a week after it started and I haven’t heard anything since. I will be considering my options in the summer. See where we finish, see how I go.”
Biding his time is nearly at an end.
