Carlton chief executive Graham Wright believes departed coach Michael Voss “had enough runway” with the club’s list to make inroads this year, just hours before their head list manager stepped aside.
It comes as the Blues’ hierarchy, comprising Wright, president Rob Priestley and football boss Chris Davies, fronted reporters at Ikon Park on Tuesday to answer questions about Voss’ departure.
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Entering this year, after trading away Charlie Curnow and losing Tom De Koning and Jack Silvagni in free agency, there weren’t high expectations of Carlton in the final year of Voss’ contract.
Still, the Voss-led Blues led at half-time in six of its nine games this year, speaking to its competitiveness. Yet, they sit 1-8.
With the Blues brass having repeatedly mentioned win-loss ratio, Wright was asked whether Voss, given the key departures, had the best chance at winning a new contract this year.
“That’s a good question,” Wright said. “I think, when we came into the year, we didn’t just base it on win-loss, and we’re not sitting here today saying it’s just win-loss.
“Did we improve in the things we wanted to? We probably hadn’t made the leaps that we would have liked to have.
“But when you say that we had players go out last year, we also had players come in – we brought in four or five guys, and three of those guys have been in the team really regularly and have contributed really well as well.
“Overall, I think it’s a good question, but I think he had a decent enough runway.”
Alongside the club’s head coach, another casualty has emerged on Tuesday evening with list manager Nick Austin reportedly stepping aside, according to AFL Media’s Riley Beveridge.
Austin was appointed as the Blues’ Head of List Management in January of 2020, arriving from the Western Bulldogs where he was their national recruiting manager.
The Blues, who picked in the top-five in the past two drafts, added three 28-year-olds last offseason in Ben Ainsworth, Oliver Florent and Will Hayward.
Asked how much better he thought the Blues should be, Wright said: “Maybe we should have won three more games, and we’ve had honorary losses in two or three games as well, but did that mask over exactly where we were at?
“I don’t think we’re shying away from the fact that we’re not good enough at the moment, and we need to get better, and we’re being very open and honest about that.”
Wright, who has been in charge since August of last year, was probed on whether his Blues were heading towards a full-blown rebuild.
“I think we’re going to attack the draft, we’ve been really open with that,” he said, refusing to concede specifically to the ‘rebuild’ terminology.
“Over the next two to three years, or, we probably started before now, with the last two years.
“We’ll certainly go to the draft again this year – this is the last uncompromised draft before Tassie comes in, we’ve got two picks in this year’s draft – whether we get to keep both of those, depending on what happens with Cody (Walker).
“But we’d also like to have more picks in this year’s draft, and we’ve got two in next year’s as well, so that’d be the way we’ll attack it.
“There’s no ceiling on these things. How quickly can you get better? Well, that’s on the new coach coming in, and the development group coming in, a new regime, I suppose. We’ll go hard at it.”
Carlton holds its own first-round pick this year – currently No.3 overall – and Sydney’s after the Curnow trade, which is presently last in the order. It also owns Sydney’s 2027 first-rounder.
However, given changes to the national draft, the Blues will almost certainly need to fork out both first-rounders to match a top-five rival bid for prized father-son prospect Walker.
The line of questioning about the Blues’ direction led to president Priestley being asked when he expected Carlton to return to the finals.
“We’re going about this in a way where we’re just looking to continually improve, and (where) our supporter base can see that improvement coming through,” he said.
“That comes from young kids coming through, developing young talent on our list. If you go back to what we did in the offseason, it’s more than just coaching and list.
“We’ve revamped development, we’ve revamped well-being, we’re making significant investment in data, analytics and AI, that’s moving so quickly not only in AFL but global sport.
“The main thing that we’re focussed on is bringing really good football people into this club, who understand what success looks like, and how to bring that about.
“The timeline on it – things, when you get good people involved, can happen very quickly, but we’re not setting a ‘this will happen in 12 months’ (timeline).
“We need to do it the right way, build it the right way, no shortcuts, and no cutting corners.”
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