360 View: Jon Ralph on why all bets could be off should Carlton’s long rebuild hit another roadblock on the Gold Coast
Carlton and Brisbane started their rebuilds at similar times. Now one club is playing some of the most attractive footy in the league while the other hasn’t scored 100 points for 58 matches. What’s gone wrong for the Blues?
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Chris Fagan arrived at Brisbane with the philosophy that the Lions wouldn’t always win but they would always try to play attractive football.
Carlton fans who sat through Groundhog Day in Saturday’s loss to Sydney could reasonably ask why their side doesn’t do either of those things.
The club’s never-ending rebuild is now in its fifth season with clear signs of improvement in honourable losses to Richmond, Port Adelaide and the Swans.
Yet as Carlton gets whiplash viewing Brisbane passing by it, its forward line numbers are as poor as ever.
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The aspiration to score 100 points would seem a pipedream after 58 matches in a row since the Blues notched the ton.
The more worrying statistic is that Carlton hasn’t scored 80 points in 17 matches since Round 8 last year.
This year’s scores are 64, 72 and 72, the Blues sucked into Sydney’s stoppage-based game after five first-term goals against the Swans.
On Friday they hit the 11-month anniversary of that 80-point day when they kicked 14.7 against a frazzled and tired Essendon side playing its fourth game in 22 days.
It was so long ago that Malcolm Turnbull was still running the country, although judging time passed by Australian prime ministers is no longer much of an indicator.
Brisbane scored 80 points 12 times last year, including five scores of 100 points, and has started the year with tallies of 102, 107 and 107.
For all Carlton’s improvement in personnel, the metrics by which Brendon Bolton would measure the club are distinctly mediocre.
They are last for points for, third-last for points against, second-last for inside-50 differential, second last in pressure, second-last for time in forward half differential, and last in kicking efficiency.
Mark Maclure was adamant in his midweek Fox Footy slot that a 21 per cent win-loss ratio put the heat on Bolton.
On Thursday he told the Herald Sun the forward line issues were fixable but said the players needed to start acting if they loved Bolton so much.
“There is pressure there. I like Bolton but the actual numbers don’t add up. It’s up to the players. If they like him, they should fix it. They have got to get it right.
“(Against Sydney) it was all about ball movement. There were so many people unattended inside 50 and they just didn’t hit that target.
“There were guys 20 and 30m out and they just banged it into the square. That’s the difference. They have to build confidence because they don’t know where the ball is going.”
For all of Harry McKay’s six contested marks against Sydney he kicked 1.3, with Mitch McGovern kicking 4.2 in two and a half games.
In other words, they deserve to be exactly where they are.
Not once has a Carlton team been inside the top eight since 2013, with the Blues inside the bottom four 68 times in those 118 rounds.
Geelong (2015) and Hawthorn (2017) spent a year out of finals then surged again.
Carlton and Brisbane followed identical paths through total rebuilds but only the team north of the border has made progress this year.
The Navy Blue faithful have backed Carlton’s Philadelphia 76ers-style rebuilding “process” but lose to Gold Coast this weekend and all bets might just be off.
Originally published as 360 View: Jon Ralph on why all bets could be off should Carlton’s long rebuild hit another roadblock on the Gold Coast
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