Carlton’s second halves are not a fadeout. They’re not a collapse. They are ritual.
Not an accident. Not momentum. A rite.
The sort of thing observed with religious precision, like the lighting of candles or the muttering of prayers nobody believes will be answered. Halftime arrives, the clock resets, and every poor bastard in the pews knows what comes next.
It’s hereditary at this point. Passed down like a bad heart or a weakness for drink. Administrators post pictures of their plums, players come and go, and still the same old circus crawls out of the rooms after half-time with church bell regularity.
This is a team that doesn’t lose structure so much as it loses its nerve. That’s the real sin. Not disorganisation, but hesitation. Teams don’t have to tear Carlton apart, they just have to wait while we do it for them.
I’d be angrier if it weren’t so predictable. Yelling at Carlton in the second half is to argue against physics. Same rules, same dimensions, same football. This is a team that reacts to pressure the way matter reacts to heat: shape stretches, certainty blurs. Nothing snaps, it just softens and bends.
We’ve well gone past the point where blame has become anything other than performance art. The knives come out for the coaching staff again, too blunt to wound, and apologetic murmurings of accountability are offered up like incense to mask the rot.
Good teams break shape to break spirit. Carlton does the opposite. They protect their shape even as their spirit leaks through the seams. And with it goes whatever passes for onfield leadership.
Not gestures. Not pointing. Not the post-match bullshit about sticking together. Leadership as interruption. As refusal. As some mad bastard deciding, no, this moment’s mine now, and dragging everyone else with him whether they like it or not.
Instead, too often, always, Carlton politely submit.
For most supporters, the fury burned off a while ago. What’s left is recognition. The ability to predict a manner of losing not as possibility, but as procedure.
Not confused. Conditioned.
And ritual, once learned, is a bastard to unlearn.
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Unfortunately, dear Elbow, the ritual of the Nunc Dimittis “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace” did not apply to the suffering Carlton communicants on Sunday.
Sounds like they’ve broken you, Elbow. Join the queue.
There was a depressing predictability about Sunday, no doubt.
The one hope I cling to is that other clubs have been able to turn their fortunes around. I remain unconvinced that Carlton is so exceptional that it isn’t possible for us,
And the Roos clash?
Someone will need to tell me the result. I’d need to be committed by a magistrate to watch Carlton at this point…
Geez we all miss the elbows blues sprays they were the ultimate- hey if anyone was the laughing stock in australian sport it was – SA cricket we’ve won ( cough cough ) the wooden spoon – 15 times since – 95-96 and remember it’s a 6 team competition before securing the holy grail back to back shield wins for the -1st ever time in the competitions -133 years history so they’re is still hope.
Devout Muslims develop a “zabiba” (raisin) – a dark marking on the forehead from banging their head against the prayer mat 5x a day. Perhaps Carlon could incorporate it in thier indigenous jumper?
Sunday Mass or Communiion had a relentless predictability to it. Carlton seems much more Shakespearean to me. Just when you tire of long sad soliloquies he would inject some comic relief.
The Elijah Hollands farce as the Drunken Porter scene in Macbeith or the Gravediiggers in Hamlet?