Bolton booted: Carlton sack third senior coach in eight years

The Carlton Football Club has today sacked a senior coach for the third time in eight years, making the decision to part ways with Brendon Bolton.

Bolton has coached the Blues for three and a half years for a record of 16 wins and 61 losses across 77 games, but only three of those wins have come in the last 18 months. The club has won only four of its last 43 AFL matches.

The decision comes after Carlton lost by 41 points to Essendon on Sunday afternoon, in a game where they were widely expected to push for the win given Essendon’s lukewarm form and mounting injury problems.

Forwards coach David Teague will be appointed as the club’s caretaker coach for the remainder of the 2019 season.

“Poor on-field performances over a sustained period of time have reached the point where the club was left with no choice but to make the difficult decision it has today,” said Carlton president Mark LoGiudice.

“Quite simply the lack of wins has fallen short of what our football club expects at this stage of its development. There was an expectation this season that we would start to see the benefits of that development however to this point that has not occurred to the level we expected and Carlton cannot afford to sit back and wait any longer.

“While winning does not solely rely on one individual, the ultimate accountability sits with the senior coach.”

Bolton first attracted interest from AFL clubs when he enjoyed a five-match undefeated stint as interim senior coach at Hawthorn while Alastair Clarkson was afflicted with Guillain-Barré syndrome in 2014.

That experience proved to be a valuable launching pad for Bolton when Carlton sacked Mick Malthouse in mid-2015, and he was eventually appointed the club’s next senior coach, narrowly beating our caretaker John Barker.

Bolton won six of his first eleven games in charge at Carlton and finished the year with a 7-15 record, a significantly better result than had been expected after the club’s 2015 wooden spoon.

He steered the club to another solid season with six wins in 2017, but was unable to avoid a downturn in 2018 after a high-profile trade move from Bryce Gibbs and an ACL injury to Sam Docherty robbed the Blues of some significant senior players.

The Blues recorded their worst season result in more than a hundred years of history, and won their fifth wooden spoon in less than two decades.

The team started season 2019 with competitive losses to Richmond, Port Adelaide and Sydney before a heart-breaking one-point loss to Gold Coast in Round 4.

They broke through the next week against the Western Bulldogs, winning by 44 points and kicking a triple-figure score for the first time in nearly two years.

Things seemed to have taken a turn for the better when they started the match on fire against Hawthorn the following week, but the Hawks were able to snatch the win late.

This was followed by uncompetitive performances against North Melbourne (losing by 58) and GWS (by 93 points) in the next three weeks, with Round 11’s loss to Essendon appearing to be the straw the broke the camel’s back.

At the same time as Bolton was hired the club embarked on an aggressive list strategy which saw it trade out multiple senior players in search of high draft picks.

The list Bolton took charge of in the season is on average half a year younger and six games less experienced than the one he signed on to coach in 2015.

In particular, the club’s decision to trade their 2019 first-round draft pick – pick No.1 on current ladder position – has placed heightened scrutiny on the club’s ladder position this year.

The club also earlier this year announced a plan to win a premiership with the next five years, a goal which it’s now clear will still require a significant and perhaps unrealistic amount of development over that time period.

“To be clear, our strategy does not change. Today is a measured step we needed to take as a football club in order to keep moving forward and will allow us to build on the work done over recent seasons,” said LoGiudice.

“While decisions such as today’s are difficult, they are necessary so that we can continue to progress towards our ultimate goal of winning premierships for our football club.”