Round 16 – Port Adelaide v Carlton: Taking The Piss
That didn’t take long. I had been entertaining the thought that it was entirely within the MO of this Carlton side to keep us in suspense, with one last dead cat bounce against a Port team which has had its own struggles this season. Silly me. The notion passed quickly as the Carlton team formed a disorganised rabble in the middle of Adelaide Oval last night and took a collective dump on proceedings.
You can’t even say they put us out of our misery, for the misery will surely continue, much to the entertainment of the rest of the competition. At least our players made it clear how they felt.
All the people charged with keeping The Great Carlton Rebuild on track have been selling everyone, with apparent belief, that we were still in a position to build upon the preliminary final berth we achieved back in 2023. Which is why, though Michael Voss did himself absolutely no favours last night, it’s time to put aside scapegoating and acknowledge a collective failure. There are a lot of fingerprints at this crime scene.
Let’s start with the players. Much can be beyond individual control in team sport, but the one basic thing any individual can control is their effort. The evidence of last night, and last week, and, really, this whole season, is that most of the Carlton playing group believe in their hearts that effort can be conditional on how they feel. If excuses are what you seek, life will never stop providing them.
This says nothing good about the culture of the club where they ply their trade. It also crushes supporters. If you fail because of execution, supporters can at least hope for improvement. If you regularly fail because of effort, well, we’re all kidding ourselves. Supporters have a role in what comes now. Are we going push a previously suggestable club into another hasty move?
Now to our coach. I referred in my previous piece to Brian Cook’s assessment of Michael Voss: that he wasn’t the most brilliant tactician, but he was chosen to be an exemplar of leadership. Voss the leader was on full display last night. Unfortunately, so was Voss the tactician. At his press conference, he wasn’t dodging responsibility. But he also sounded like the train engineer who was reassuring us all the underlying gauge settings were sound as the train went over the cliff.
Michael Voss was the ultimate alpha dog as a footballer. That attitude proved his undoing during his first coaching stint at Brisbane. When Carlton hired him, we were told this was an older, wiser dog. But as this season has limped along, he has dogmatically stuck to a message of process: it’s just a matter of sticking to the process. This has been reflected in team selection. Role players have been preferenced over those with more flair. The mantra is clearance and contest. But clearance and contest demands effort. And effort is reliant on will. If will collapses, then it all unravels. Is Voss a dog who can learn new tricks? Can he listen to counsel?
What of our footy department in general? Voss’s choices are in no small way a reflection of the players he’s been supplied. We don’t have a list that can naturally play a run and spread style. We have a lot of blokes who are pretty ordinary kicks. We chronically lack game smarts and composure. These comments apply to some players on pretty hefty contracts. Why, after four years with this coaching group, do we still appear largely clueless about how to kick inside 50?
Now to the club in general. Amongst the torrent of media advice we’ve received in recent days, the most pertinent (to my ears) came from former Giant Phil Davis. Among a long list of consultancy-style suggestions, he got the nub of it. Who really makes the decisions at Carlton and what drives those decisions? What are our real priorities? Is Carlton footy club the kind of place where people on all levels can have honest conversations with anyone else? Pretty basic stuff, but I think our current predicament demands we ask ourselves.
I’m in my 46th year as a Carlton Member, which tells you I am a man who often lets sentiment overrule common sense. In all that time, I consider my absolute low point watching Carlton was Round 7, 2015, against GWS, in the dying weeks of the Malthouse coaching debacle. A club only a few years old treated us like a joke. That Carlton playing group was as dispirited a bunch as ever put on the jumper. But last night is getting pretty close.
I’ve had it easy. I’m old enough to have enjoyed the good old days, when we were really a different club. Or are we? I suppose we are about to find out.
PORT ADELAIDE 5.4 8.10 13.11 16.14 (110)
CARLTON 0.3 1.6 4.9 8.12 (60)
GOALS
Port Adelaide: Georgiades 5, Rioli 3, Byrne-Jones 2, Bergman 2, Farrell, Jones, Boak, Visentini
Carlton: Fantasia 2, L.Young, Motlop, Williams, Hollands, Docherty, Cripps
BEST
Port Adelaide: Georgiades, Rozee, Butters, Bergman, Ratugolea
Carlton: Hewett, De Koning, Docherty, Haynes, Fantasia, Motlop
INJURIES
Port Adelaide: Nil
Carlton: Adam Saad (concussion)
SUBSTITUTES
Port Adelaide: Logan Evans (replaced Jason Horne-Francis in the fourth quarter)
Carlton: Flynn Young (replaced Adam Saad in the third quarter)
Crowd: 30,381 at Adelaide Oval
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About John Butler
John Butler has fled the World's Most Liveable Car Park and now breathes the rarefied air of the Ballarat Plateau. For his sins, he has passed his 40th year as a Carlton member.
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I watched the first half of Thursday night’s match (I hesitate to say “contest). Even I can take only so much schadenfreude. I kept thinking “how did they beat us?” – but I guess a fit Weitering and Cripps must have helped against my Eagles.
My focus was mostly on Charlie Curnow. I’ve seen him play games where he was Josh Kennedy with bonus athleticism and skill. Kicking goals from the boundary at 50 and catching marks like plucking cherries from a tree. How does someone so talented suddenly become unable to tie their shoelaces?
Got me thinking about Voss the man and leader – as you sagely observe. The elite modern coaches like Macrae; Fagan; Beveridge are conjurers and hucksters – able to sell a vision that makes the lame walk. Voss is the old school who encourages running at brick walls rather than round them – with little impression on the wall but a noticeable flattening of noses and enthusiasm (file under Malthouse M).
Thankfully Carlton’s problems run much deeper with recruiting and list management – as you observe. But while Carlton’s future direction is shaped by talkback ranters and pokies parasites like Mathieson I can rest assured that the future will mirror the past.
PB, when we played you we hadn’t yet completely dropped our bundle. You were a week off.
Charlie has been disappointing this year, but it is not totally surprising. He had 3 major interruptions to his pre-season. Not many players thrive without a good pre-season. In his defense as well, we are as dumb as a sack of hammers kicking inside 50. The number of times he has space in front of him, he literally points to that space, but the kicker still drops the kick on top of his head to allow every defender in 100 metres to get to the contest, is frankly mind boggling. Saying that, his effort has too often been lacking, particularly when the ball hits the deck..
Re your last point, Phil Davis was alert to those “prominent supporters” in his discussion I sited. The club really does have to decide who makes the decisions. Who are we really trying to please. Who’s priorities are we pursuing. I reckon we’ve made some progress on that front, but I’m unconvinced we’ve made enough.
JB
The next time we get together, let’s discuss re-builds.
I know a thing or two about them.
Carlton looked dispirited on Thursday. It was the exact opposite of what I had expected.
Carlton live in the past.
Their fan culture is to “go their players”.
I have many Carlton barracking friends and at least 50% of them is to have a shot at the individual player or collective team effort whenever they make a mistake or there is a perceived lack of skill or effort.
The board and management haven’t helped with their attitude as well.
There has been much copy about this in the last few years and a lot recently, yet nothing has changed.
Why?
Because a club’s culture comes from the top.
Unless the admin and bosses really collectively have a proper, deep and honest look inside and are honest with themselves, nothing will change.
It is up the THEM to to change.
Football is not a market-based business – 30 years of misery should tell them that, these so-called leaders.
You just gotta feel for the players.
Frank
Ps – I am interested in how Graeme Wright goes. If anyone can change Carlton, he can.
Go Pies!
This is what it has come too. Even the Magpie supporters are making sense. :)
You’re right about living in the past, Frank. In the minds of so many fans and prominent club figures we are the club that won 16 flags. What we really are now is the least successful club in the last 25 years. I was guilty of this myself for too long.
The last few years had flattered to deceive. Things looked to be improving under Luke Sayers. But then the whole ‘dick pick’ saga reared its head (so to speak). Maybe that was a harbinger of the season to come.
If Graham Wright was to tell the board they were part of the problem, would they want to hear that? Interesting times await.
As a neutral I am throwing Essendon into the mix as well. Both clubs are delusional as they continue to operate in the same way as when they were powerhouses. They are lucky to have big support bases who continue to stick.
Notwithstanding that my view is that both clubs are hopeless at developing and nurturing talent. The top 40 kids in the draft can all play but you need to develop them and nurture them to enable them to maximinse their talent.
Andrew McGrath and Sam Walsh both number 1 picks are prime examples as to my eye they are no better than they were at 19. That’s to do with poor nurturing aligned with cultures that don’t fit today.
Geelong are so good at maximinising the talent of kids they draft because they clearly have the right people looking after the new arrivals. Dogs are starting to get that right as well as evidenced by 2 second year draftees Freijah [45] and Sanders[5] on Friday night.
As a lateral thinker perhaps Essendon and Carlton should merge at the geographical half way point Moonee Ponds and call themselves the Moonee Ponds Frogs and the State Government could build them a roofed stadium at MV racecourse.?
Hayden, hard to see the two clubs happily co-existing despite their many shared characteristics. A hard sell to either tribe.
Their mutual Napoleonic complexes would clash.
It is interesting how both clubs have been able to grow their membership bases despite offering those supporters very little. In a sense, they’re successful businesses. It’s just a shame they’re supposed to be footy clubs.
Brilliantly summed up JB. One of Carltons more insipid performances ever. No effort, energy or care. The legends of the past would be appalled.
JB while we all rant and rave deep down all we want is -100 per cent effort,Thursday night that wasn’t it was insipid and pathetic-Brilliant article by Phil Davis a lot of nodding the head re sporting clubs in general
Hayden – with a roof over Moonee Valley stadium the AFL could play double headers with harness races in the 1/4; 1/2 and 3/4 time breaks and between matches. So much wasted down time in AFL matches these days when you can’t get a “Next Team to Score” in-play bet on. Victorian government and the AFL are both wholly owned subsidiaries of the corporate gambling industry – so we need more lateral thinking like yours. “Carlton/Essendon are 10 goals down – but I can’t go home with 3 runners live into the last leg of the Quaddy”.
Harden up Blue baggers for goodness sake. Thirty years is a dry spell, not a drought. See Footscray, St Kilda, Geelong, Melbourne, Swans, Roos.
Dry spell – I like it, Dips.
And admirable work here, J Butler.
I wonder who will be first to win their next flag: Carlton, North or St Kilda?