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Opinion
What the hell has happened at Carlton?
We cast our mind back to last May, and the Blues were flying high. With a new coach in Michael Voss at the helm, Carlton were 8-2 after 10 rounds.
Charlie Curnow was looking like the player we’d always hoped he’d become, and on his way to a Coleman Medal, with his teammate Harry McKay having won it the previous year.
Sam Walsh was the best young midfielder in the competition, having polled 30 Brownlow votes the year before, and Patrick Cripps had been best on ground in five of the opening seven weeks, and would go on to claim the coveted medal himself.
If we put together a ladder from Rd 11 last year, the Blues would be sitting 13th, in the bottom six, with eight wins, 11 losses and a draw. The teams below them would be Fremantle, GWS, Hawthorn, North Melbourne and West Coast. It’s a sorry site.
Carlton’s eight wins in that almost-12 month period have come against:
– West Coast twice and North Melbourne, and those two teams along with Hawthorn are effectively bye rounds these days
– GWS twice, who have been in the doldrums for two years
– Fremantle in Melbourne, and they’re going worse than the Blues over the same period
– Essendon last year, who were about to sack their coach
– Geelong in Round 2 this year, who were wildly out of form at the time, and Carlton only scraped past
There is not a single “good” win among them. Not one, that suggests they are a team of substance.
Rarely have we seen a team that is so far less than the sum of its parts, than what we are seeing from the Blues right now.
Two Coleman medallists in Curnow and McKay, which should be forming the most potent key forward duo of the decade. Jack Silvagni is a more than adequate role player as a third marking tall that can lead-up, drop behind, and even apply good pressure at ground level.
Michael Voss addresses the Blues (Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
Corey Durdin and Jesse Motlop look like they’ll both make the grade as small forward crumbers and pressure players. Both are young and developing, with Motlop still only a teenager.
They have what should be the deepest midfield in the competition, with two genuine stars leading the way in Cripps and Walsh, who complement each other perfectly. George Hewett and Adam Cerra were brought in last year as canny acquisitions, both great all-rounders, albeit Hewett with a more hardened defensive edge and Cerra more of a threat offensively.
Blake Acres was brought into the club this year, to add even more depth and provide more substance on a wing than Carlton had seen for a while. This is a team that thinks its midfield is going so well that Matthew Kennedy, who has proven he is a serious footballer and genuinely came of age in the back half of 2021, has been relegated to the sub for the past two weeks.
The Blues even have one of the most athletic young ruckman in the competition, in Tom De Koning, even if Michael Voss seems to lack a bit of faith in him. We’ve seen what his brother can do at Geelong when Chris Scott gave him the responsibility of holding down a key post.
Down back, Adam Saad was a deserved All-Australian last year, as arguably the most damaging rebounding backman in the game. Jacob Weitering was in the All-Australian squad, without quite making the final team, although he does have a tendency toward up-and-down seasons for a player of his quality.
Sam Docherty has also been an All-Australian in the past, yet has been pushed more into the midfield this year for reasons unknown. He even played forward in the first half in the loss against Brisbane last weekend, and looked like a fish out of water. He’s had no impact in either role, despite his raw stats looking impressive at times.
(Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
Carlton are wanting for nothing in terms of talent. Their best dozen or so players stand up against any opposition 12 in the competition, and there are more than enough decent players to surround them that they should be going far better than what we’re seeing.
The basic fact is, and it really is simplicity itself, the Blues don’t get the ball forward enough. Everyone can tell that just by looking at them play. It’s not as bad as what Collingwood looked like under Nathan Buckley towards the end, but it’s in the same area.
Unsurprisingly with Curnow and McKay as focal points, they rank sixth for marks inside 50 this season. As individuals, they both rank in the top six for that stat, with more than 50 marks between them in their forward arc through eight rounds.
Carlton rank third in disposals this season, but only 14th for inside 50s. Fancy having that weaponry at your disposal up forward, and allowing your team to piss around with the ball. That’s on the coach.
Voss is less than a month away from being halfway through his three year contract at the Blues. What started with much fanfare and hope that quickly turned to expectation, has now turned sour.
Last year, in early July I asked the question of whether Carlton was in a form slump, or were they just not that good.
At the time, the Blues has just fielded the second youngest team of any club in the competition. In Round 8 just gone, they were the seventh oldest. Life comes at you fast.
They should be better. They’re not.
Carlton should be in premiership contention right now, yet at best they are stuck in the middle-of-the-road, and at worst shaping as a bottom six side. Something has to change, and quickly, or the Voss experiment at the Blues could be over before it’s begun.