A loss of innocence

For me, the most heartbreaking thing tonight was not Jude taking another gutless performance by pros twice his age on his own shoulders, nor the mundane resolution of another last-day dogfight under Small Dong Energy. It wasn't even Jude's last big moment being cut short in front of an empty ground by cramp.

It was the fact that, sitting out there for an hour on the turf after the game, he was dealing with the realisation that he had to leave behind the place and the club he loved, because it would never have enough for him to be able to achieve his enormous potential. He had to come to terms, as a teenage Blues supporter (the most rabid kind), that after a decade -- the majority of his life -- of it meaning everything to him, he could never fulfill his dreams in the royal blue. We witnessed the loss of that boy's innocence tonight. Today was the day he became a pro; he ought to be on top of the world -- but it was also the day he realised he couldn't change the world, on top of it or not.

"I would die for this club," he said, carrying again the weight of 145 years of mediocrity on his shoulders. Nobody dies for the Blues, kid. They just kill you, cell by cell by cell, week by month by season.