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No, of course Carlton shouldn’t tank the 2016 AFL season. Tanking is bad. But what exactly should they do?
Just play football, and everything else will take care of itself. If you know what I mean.
Before we get stuck in, a programming note.
Today, we launched The Roar AFL podcast, which, as the name implies, is a podcast, hosted on The Roar, that talks about the AFL.
The pilot episode can be found on iTunes, SoundCloud or on this page, and sees myself and fellow Roar expert Jay Croucher discuss three things we’re looking forward to in the coming AFL season.
If we get an excellent, Roar-cus response, we’ll look to do something more regular and with a rotating cast of hosts and guests from The Roar‘s AFL stables. At the very least, we’ll be jumping on the mic to complete a full, team-by-team preview of the 2016 AFL season.
That’s a subtle request to please listen, like, share, comment and subscribe. There are lots of footy podcasts out there, but we believe what we can bring is an unflinchingly clear view on what’s happening on the field in the AFL, free of buzzwords, hot takes and Supercoach tips.
As far as we can tell, ours will be the only podcast that does not include at least one of these things.
(Just, please, ignore my Richmond faux pas.)
Right, so Carlton.
The Navy Blues had a dire 2015, with four victories, a mid-season coaching change, board upheaval, and a dramatic, if not productive, turnover of players. This culminated in a stellar $2.8 million loss in the football year, which is positively Brisbane-esque.
Their trade period was remarkable, in so far as they retained all of their older players, traded out a number of good younger ones, all for two additional high draft picks (costing them a 2016 first rounder) and a pupu platter of discarded talent.
I wrote about it, remember? That was a fun day, sports fans.
My prescription was a more thorough, wholesale rebuild to commence immediately in 2015, rather than the slow, tentative build that it appears the higher ups have decided to pursue. Why use an axe when it’s clear a chainsaw is required?
The triangle of Bryce Gibbs, Marc Murphy and Dale Thomas (although his value is probably depressed at the moment given his recent injury history) will ply their trade for one more year, adding more kilometres to their odometers, while reducing their potential trade value. Whether any of them will be around, or in Carlton’s best 22 at least, by the time their team are contending for finals and a flag is debatable.
All of that activity in October has left Carlton as clogged as it was to start the 2015 season: their list ranks seventh on the age curve, which at 24 years (according to DraftGuru) is almost precisely where they sat this time last year (24.1). Carlton are older than Adelaide, Richmond, Sydney (yes, the Swans!), Port Adelaide and the Western Bulldogs, which is insane.
Sitting at the top of the list on the age curve are Kade Simpson, Andrew Walker, Michael Jamison, Dennis Armfield, Cameron Wood, and Dale Thomas, who are all 29 or older in this football year. The prime age list – players aged between 24 and 29 – is for the most part made up of depth players, plus the three best assets in Murphy, Gibbs and Matthew Kreuzer. The list aged 23 or younger contains Patrick Cripps, and, well, the new crop of draftees and discarded Giants.
The Blues have lost experience, though, which happens when a 250-game player like Chris Judd comes off the books. Carlton are ranked 16th for average games played, which is down from ninth in 2015.
They enter 2016 as the team with the largest gap between age and experience in the league. It’s still, as I say, a clogged list, and one that is another spring clean or two away from even bottoming out.
In a crowded competition, where finals spots look to be at an all-time premium in not just this year, but for the two or three after that, what do the 2016 Carlton Blues do?
They shouldn’t tank, because tanking is bad, and AFL teams don’t tank anyway, do they?
The remarkable thing is, it almost doesn’t matter what Carlton do. We’re ten weeks away from the start of the season, and Carlton clearly have the worst list in the 2016 season – at least until we see what the Bombers’ next move is. Their fellow bottom-four finishers in Brisbane and Gold Coast have better playing stocks all throughout their lists, but particularly at the top end.
The Blues play the Bombers and Lions twice, in addition to double-ups against Collingwood, St Kilda and Sydney. Both a home and away victory against the Lions and Bombers look achievable, but otherwise the Blues will be hard pressed to do better than split the ledger in these ten games.
All Carlton have to do to get into a good starting position for the 2016 draft is play football, if you know what I mean. Despite all of the end of season strangeness, it’s something they showed us they’re capable of doing last season.
Their newly minted first-round picks – Jacob Weitering, Harry McKay, Charlie Curnow and David Cunningham – should all see some playing time, and perhaps early in the season. The club may even feel generous and lob a few games the way of their Greater Western Sydney discards, but I suspect those opportunities will be limited.
The Blues open their season in the traditional way against Richmond, before playing Sydney, Gold Coast, Western Bulldogs, Fremantle, Essendon and Collingwood to round out the first third of the season. That’s seven teams with very different styles, who are at different stages of the list management cycle. They represent an excellent test of the new guys’ collective mettle.
There are going to be plenty of spots open in Carlton’s starting 22 as well, with high-use players like Tom Bell (22 games played), Andrew Carrazzo (16), Lachie Henderson (16), Chris Yarran (14) and Troy Menzel (14) no longer with the club.
All up, a combined 134 games for the Blues last year – which is 28 per cent of the total games available to be played in a 22-game season – are no longer around. The injured Thomas, Kreuzer and Gibbs will take up some of that slack, but others will be called upon to fill the void.
Meanwhile, the likes of Andrejs Everitt (22), Sam Rowe (20), Sam Docherty (19), Cameron Wood (18), Simon White (14), Andrew Walker (12) and Dennis Armfield (12) should see less playing time. These are not players who will be around in the next two or three years if the Blues are serious, and a portion of those minutes should instead be allocated to players who will be.
Pumping miles into the legs of their draftees – playing the kids if you will – must be objective number one for Carlton in 2016. But not too many, because Carlton’s new draftees could be good – in the way that, say, Cripps is good. After all, the Blues needs to play football this year, if you know what I mean.
Their second on-field priority – one which we’re told is being addressed – is a complete teardown and rebuild of their game style, not unlike the complete teardown and rebuild required of their playing list.
Under ex-coach Michael Malthouse, the Blues rolled out a tired, stodgy style of football. Carlton built around the maintenance of possession through slow play, holding onto the ball rather than sharing it, and playing the percentages. The only things it led to was a terrible percentage and Malthouse’s sacking.
There were some signs of renewal under interim coach John Barker, but with very little time to change course, and a raft of injuries and early surgeries, the Blues were still playing a dated brand for much of 2015. The Blues were ranked 17th in the competition for uncontested possessions and 16th for marks taken per game, while they ranked near the top of the table in uncontested possessions and marks conceded (fourth and second respectively).
To the Blues’ credit, they were good when the ball was in tight, with a clearance differential of +2.5 and a break-even result on contested possessions for the full season, suggesting a team that was strong in the clinches. That’s in no small measure due to the impact of Cripps, who ranked eighth in the competition for contested possessions won per game and 12th in clearances earned, as a 19-year-old.
But, in the end, Carlton’s dinosaur tactics were shown up as such by the free-flowing and fast stylings of the Western Bulldogs, West Coast Eagles and Greater Western Sydney Giants. In the 12 games where their opponents took 100 or more marks (the season average, plus 10 for good measure), Carlton conceded an average of 118.7 points, compared to 93 points in other games (a gap of 25.7 points). The only clubs with a larger gap were Essendon (+30.1 points conceded) and Brisbane (+28.9).
Forward of the ball, Carlton’s biggest issue has been personnel for a number of years now, and that looks set to be the case for 2016. From this way out, it’s hard to see how the Blues score anything more than they did last year – a pithy 69 points per game – with their projected forward line, which is almost exactly the same as they trotted out last season.
Dale Thomas could add something on the wing and at half forward, but the problem is once the ball moves inside the forward 50 stripe.
Their best bet is to begin to evolve into a side more in keeping with modern AFL tactics. At the most basic level, Carlton should, like the other teams that are now led by a recent ex-Hawthorn assistant coach, seek to play a much more open and free-flowing style of football. A tactical revolution takes time, which should suit the Blues nicely.
Which brings us full circle: Carlton don’t need to tank the 2016 season, and they shouldn’t. They just need to play football, and the rest should take care of itself. If you know what I mean.