John Nicholls, generally regarded as Carlton’s greatest ever player, has joined League football’s growing list of luminaries in paying respect to the late St Kilda Premiership Captain Darrel Baldock.

Nicholls, who with Baldock is amongst the 23 Legends of the Australian Football Hall of Fame, and is Victoria’s most capped state player, said that his first dealings with “The Doc” came in his maiden appearance for the Big V more than 50 years ago.

“I played my first state game against him [Baldock] in ‘Tassie’ in 1959. He was 21, captain of La Trobe and captain of Tasmania. I later played with him in state games and we became great friends,” Nicholls told carltonfc.com.au.

“He was playing centre half-forward for Tasmania and if memory serves our centre half-back in that game was North Melbourne’s John Brady. The late John James played in that game too.

“Baldock was a great player. He was beautifully balanced either way, left or right, he’d fly for marks against bigger blokes and he’d hit the ground running.”

Nicholls said that it was accurate to compare Baldock with the great Alex Jesaulenko in terms of his football ability. As he said: “Like ‘Jezza’ he used to fly and he was great low down”.

Nicholls said that throughout all of the Carlton-St Kilda contests through the 1960s he saw Baldock nullified but once.

“He probably beat all of our blokes - ‘Loftsy’ [Wes Lofts] and ‘Gooldy’ [John Goold] included,” Nicholls recalled. “The only Carlton bloke I ever saw beat him one day was Sergio Silvagni, who was strong and played a similar sort of game.”

Nicholls believed that the last time he caught up with his much-respected St Kilda adversary of the 1960s was in 2006, when Baldock was elevated to legend status by the Australian Football Hall of Fame committee.

“He was suffering with a heart condition and strokes and various things, but he got so excited to see you that he was almost crying. He just got so overwhelmed . . . and what a great fellow he was,” Nicholls said.