Late yesterday afternoon Carlton CEO Steven Triggs and club president Mark LoGiudice held a rambling 20-minute press conference in which they appeared to be trying to piece together the broken fragments of a puzzle that might provide a clue as to what went wrong.
Earlier in the day they had announced the sacking of coach Mick Malthouse – with the best part of a season still left on his contract.
Here are my immediate thoughts – as a long-suffering Carlton supporter – as I watched their baffling attempts to make sense of a disastrous couple of months.
1) How utterly uninspiring
Sounding as detached and dispassionate as a Ferris Beuller’s teacher during roll-call, club president Mark LoGiudice read a press release out loud to the assembled media. To say that his statement was little more than a laundry list of tired platitudes dripping in corporate wankspeak feels generous.
At some point he pauses to “stress” that Carlton’s 2015 season is “not a write-off”.
Maybe, but this shamefully unemotional press conference is, itself, already off the rails.
When asked what the club hoped to salvage from the remainder of the year LoGiudice stumbles before muttering something vague about maybe discovering as yet undeveloped “skill sets” and “learning some new things”.
CEO Steven Triggs later appears to fail in convincing even himself – visibly wincing – as he urges the club to “try some things” and “learn some stuff”.
He also reveals that the club’s search for a new senior coach capable of delivering it back from the abyss will begin with turning over and looking underneath rocks.
It seems an apt starting point.
The question of what Carlton hopes to achieve on the field between now and the first in a long line of Septembers that they are unlikely to play any role in was perhaps not the most crucial question to be answered.
But it was an obvious and important question. That that Triggs and LoGiudice failed to produce a coherent answer to it is telling.
Neither man even hints – aside from a brief reference to “developing core competitiveness” – at the possibility of winning games in 2015 in order to build some kind of momentum for 2016.
Instead it is all about “moving on”. But what to?
The performance is flatter and less convincing than any of the dull and lethargic efforts the playing group dished up for Malthouse.
2) How embarrassing
How utterly humiliating for the club and its fans. It will take years but Carlton will one day again be a competitive and successful club (yes, I still have faith). But this undignified and sadly predictable disaster will long be worn as an embarrassing stain on the club’s reputation.
The latest own goal for an organisation. It will be a stick with which Magpies and Bombers fans will no doubt delight in beating us. It will take a lot of success to make these memories go away.
3) How is Mick Malthouse the only problem here?
Triggs and LoGiudice are sticking fast to the pre-agreed language. A “misalignment” of Mick and club, we are repeatedly informed, has been the catalyst for the sacking.
It is made clear that Mick alone is at fault for this fatal misalignment.
Yet surely a little due diligence on the club’s part, along with some lessons it might have learned over Malthouse’s tenure, might have warned them of the need to deal very carefully and thoughtfully with their coach once the alignments were getting wobbly.
Malthouse is renowned as a strong character used to doing things his own way. It’s part of the reason he was hired by Carlton. And he has never devoted much time to mincing words or contemplating the ramifications of bridge burning – just ask Eddie McGuire.
So honestly – what did Triggs and LoGiudice expect?
We are left guessing.
The fact that they make no acknowledgement – let alone apology – for their own role in so woefully mishandling the whole affair (or even contributing to it) is likely to only further infuriate a Carlton fan-base already baying for the board’s blood.
They at least concede that the fans are “frustrated”. For a moment they almost seem to be getting it.
But LoGiudice then offers his definition of ‘crisis’. According to the president it is a state of not knowing where one is. It also involves the absence of a plan and direction.
He argues this is not Carlton’s present state. Given the week’s developments we are left to conclude that the president knows Carlton is currently situated up the proverbial creek and that his cunning plan involves looking for something resembling a paddle – presumably under a rock.
4) What would Ratts have done?
Malthouse’s famously spurned predecessor – club legend Brett Ratten – always seemed a classier guy than to engage in schadenfreude. But still, Malthouse was brought in to take the team to the next level – a level that Ratten was supposedly incapable of driving his charges to. Instead the club has been set back at least five years.
It must at the very least make Ratten feel a little better about his legacy.
5) Who is next then?
Who would want to be? That is the question.
The looks on the faces of Triggs and LoGiudice are likely to offer any prospective coach capable of overseeing such a wholesale “rebuild” little encouragement.
It is all feeling very grim. But then I recall an up and coming district attorney once saying something about the night always being darkest just before the dawn.
I’m sure things turned out great for him as they will for the Blues.
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