There is so much going wrong at Carlton but it will inevitably end up distilling to a question of the coach, especially because this is the Blues we are talking about.
But let’s be fair. Amid everything going wrong on the field, there has also been so much go awry that was completely beyond Michael Voss’s control.
Carlton had a lot go wrong in the off-season, but that won’t ease the pressure on coach Michael Voss if the losses continue to mount.Credit: Getty Images
Voss could not have anticipated that one of his highly paid star key forwards, Harry McKay, would need to stop playing and have time away to deal with personal issues. He would not have predicted Elijah Hollands, likewise, would need a rest from the game.
He would not have forecast that Jagga Smith, whom the Blues plunged heavy draft capital on, would do his knee before his first season even began.
He wouldn’t have expected Charlie Curnow requiring three surgeries in the off-season or that the Blues would then be forced, reluctantly, to rush him back into their team before he was ready because their other options were so limited.
He did know that an alternative to Curnow – particularly if McKay was absent – would be Jack Silvagni, a player who trained all summer as a defender. A player who missed 600 days between AFL matches with injury would suddenly be needed as a key forward, and that Brodie Kemp could be used as a speculative option up forward.
While salacious social media scandals are not uncommon in the AFL, Voss would not have foreseen his club being engulfed and sidetracked by one during the off-season that surrounded its president – his most significant supporter – who eventually quit the club.
So, there have been plenty of unexpected challenges for Voss to deal with. But Carlton fans and members started the season with premiership ambitions. So, although the challenges have been formidable, they would have expected their team to be capable of overcoming them.
They would have reasonably expected a superior level of performance. That when their coach talks of getting back to playing their system, they’d have a clear idea what system he is talking about.
Bear in mind it’s round three. Yes, at this stage last year Brisbane hadn’t won a game either. But Brisbane were coming off a grand final the year before and had finished in the top five in each of the four years before that. Carlton doesn’t have that sort of record to fall back on.
Carlton has now won just two of their past 12 games. The mitigating issues that arose in the off-season cannot absolve a club that was second on the ladder in round 20 last year.
So the questions are these. Can the man who was good enough to wrench them from a brink in 2023 do it again? They are not at the brink now, but it is getting closer. And more broadly, there is a growing fear that the Blues’ moment with this list is passing them by quicker than they realised.
Can the man who had them second on the ladder just six months ago really be the wrong man to lead them now? Or will those fumbles in the final month of last season and the humiliation of their opening-round loss to Richmond this year affect his ability to get them going on another charge to finals this year?
Tiger should cop ban
Richmond and Rhyan Mansell should accept his three-match ban for shoving Liam O’Connell head-first into oncoming traffic. The Saints defender ended up concussed and out of this game and the next.
Richmond will feel aggrieved because this entire issue was thrust onto the agenda when their young star Sam Lalor fractured his jaw from a similar type of incident in the pre-season. Reuben Ginbey, in my mind, should have been suspended for that act too.
The AFL flagged concerns over these issues with clubs at the start of the season, so the argument about not changing a policy mid-season holds little water.
The further argument that Mansell didn’t mean to hurt the player is utterly irrelevant. No one whose conduct is graded careless is accused of doing something deliberately – if they were they would be charged with intentional behaviour.
His rough conduct was graded as careless. Shoving someone in the back into oncoming 100kg forwards would appear the very definition.
Rowell gets his mojo back
Matt Rowell is not the Matt Rowell of the past few years. He is back to the form he showed in the first few games of his career.
Matt Rowell is back to his very best form.Credit: via Getty Images
Rowell burst onto the football scene in 2020, accepting the Joel Selwood baton of warrior prince. He accumulated Brownlow votes at a rate that would draw an approving nod from Patrick Cripps and Lachie Neale.
Rowell is back to playing as an elite game-breaker. He is an inside and outside player again. And he should have six Bronwlow votes for the first two games of the year.
For the past few years., it seemed Rowell was disappearing into his own game, a victim of his own excellence. He was so good at getting the hard, inside ball that it became all he got.
Every time he got the ball he would have an opponent on his back, and he didn’t know how to get an easy possession. He would routinely get the ball, but unless Noah Anderson or Touk Miller was there to deal with it then the possessions went nowhere.
He stopped being a player that hurt you. But that’s what he’s back doing. He certainly hurt Melbourne and their once vaunted midfield on Saturday.
Rowell has rediscovered how to get outside the pack. He does not give to his first choice, but pauses, uses his strength to push away and his vision to find space and move into it.
He is using his legs now, not to brace to stand up in a tackle but to power away from tacklers and find space. He is running harder and has found the pace needed to link play and deliver inside his team’s forward-50m. He has become more rounded.
These were forgotten features of his game. He has rediscovered them at the right time, for he is out of contract, and at the end of last year met with Geelong and the Western Bulldogs while other clubs like Collingwood courted him.
He is not playing like an unhappy player who wants out. He is invested. But he is playing like a player that those Victorian clubs will be getting even more eager to try and prise away.
The significance of Saturday’s game should not be understated. The Suns were flaky before and wilted in this type of game. Comfortable at home they couldn’t win on the road, now they are yet to play at home and have won both games.
Jack Viney handballs under huge pressure from Sun Sam Flanders.Credit: AFL Photos
Demons lose identity
Melbourne should be happy they only lost by 10 goals on Saturday. This was a 15- to 20-goal shellacking dressed up as 10-goaler.
Ben King kicked four goals but should have had that many to half-time and finished the day with eight or 10.
Melbourne looked like a team going in the opposite direction to the Suns.
They were beaten by a younger more complete and cohesive team. The midfield was belted by Rowell, Anderson and Miller, with Bailey Humphrey looking better by the week as a dynamic forward and midfielder.
For all the off-season talk of change and cohesion, Melbourne have so far looked like a team that has lost their identity and haven’t found a solution to the one big problem up forward that has plagued them for years (and, yes, of course Pickett has been unseen this year). They are now getting beaten in contest and clearance.
In five of their past nine games they have conceded more than 100 points – a threshold they only crossed three times in 91 games between 2020 and 2023.
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