Former Carlton fitness boss Andrew Russell says the 2023 preliminary final team blew a golden chance to win that year’s premiership, shocked that a self-satisfied playing group did not fight hard enough in the second half of the loss to Brisbane Lions at the Gabba.

Russell says he is still mystified why that team failed to cash in on its white-hot form, aware they were set up as well as any team he had been involved with across two decades to win a premiership.

The Blues team won nine games on the bounce to set up a finals chance and then knocked over Sydney and Melbourne to give itself a Gabba preliminary final against the Lions.

WATCH THE FULL SACKED EPISODE BELOW

Yet after a hot start that saw them kick the game’s first five goals the Blues were behind by three points at half time.

As Russell told the Herald Sun’s Sacked podcast, in retrospect they were already beaten by that stage.

He fears the players were self-satisfied with their rousing late-season run instead of realising it might have been their best chance to break a 28-year premiership drought.

“Carlton gave me some of the greatest days of my life professionally. That final at the MCG when we beat Melbourne (in the semi-final), that is the most phenomenal 15 minutes I have ever had in my life. It was extraordinary, walking off that ground with Vossy and the crowd exhilaration was extraordinary,” Russell said.

“That period in 2023 is almost as good a block as I have ever seen or been involved in. I honestly believe that we gave that group as good an opportunity to win as any group I have worked with and they didn’t take it. And that is really disappointing.

“They were in a great space, partly because we had had some (injury) issues during the year so they were fresh. We were in good shape. But I don’t think we dealt with the moment well at all.

“We are in a position to win and then we get cheered off like we have won. Phenomenal. I came out of every preliminary final gutted. This one I was thinking, ‘What aren’t I seeing here’.

“This is a moment lost and not many people were seeing that. They were seeing excitement into the future. Everyone was feeling like it was pretty special. And that group did a phenomenal job to get to that point. Why (couldn’t they have won the flag?) They were winning by 60 points on average. I have never seen a team win by that much. Not many teams win by that much. And in the end the story gets told and they are winners or no good. But the reality is when you are so close to it the margins are so tight.”

“THESE GUYS LEARNT HOW TO LOSE”

Russell arrived at Carlton at the end of 2018 having won flags as part of high-performance teams involved at premierships at Essendon, Port Adelaide, and Hawthorn.

He was ready for a change of scene and playing group, aware his message over 14 years at Hawthorn had dulled in effectiveness.

But a playing group that had been deep in a rebuild with just 24 wins in four seasons seemed content with mediocrity.

Brendon Bolton was soon sacked, followed by David Teague after only 50 AFL games.

And the combustible but hugely productive environment of Hawthorn as Russell and Alastair Clarkson went at each other for the greater good was replaced by a more sensitive approach.

“I walked into Carlton and it was a different environment. Completely different. The club looked like it was being well run and they had their finances in order. But you walk into a club with high talent that is losing and that had an impact on them. These guys learnt how to lose.

“At Hawthorn we were a really tight conditioning group and we were prepared to go (hard) whenever we needed to go. So I came in with the same approach and some people were like: ‘This is a bit confronting.’ What is confronting about it? This is a high performance environment.”

Three years into his tenure at Carlton Michael Voss was appointed after a top-to-bottom review commissioned by president Luke Sayers.

In Voss’s first season the team narrowly failed to make finals with a heartbreaking final round loss to Collingwood.

In 2023 the Blues lost eight of nine games mid-way through the season before that spectacular charge.

But amid a 2024 injury crisis that saw a spate of soft-tissue injuries he and coach Voss agreed he would move on.

OUTSIDE FORCES

Carlton is just plain different to so many other AFL clubs.

Its board has long been stacked with gazillionaires who exert outsized influence.

Dick Pratt’s Visy once sponsored Chris Judd in a contentious third-party arrangement, with board member Jeanne Pratt lobbying for the club to give Brendan Fevola one last chance in 2011.

The club’s powerful coterie groups assume they have a position of power, while pokies king Bruce Mathieson regularly throws haymakers from the top ropes given he has gifted hundreds of lucrative poker machines to the club.

Russell admits he was shocked at the amount of time players and coaches had to spend catering to the whims of those who at other clubs would be kept away.

“The thing the club did is that they serviced everyone outside of the club because they were losing. So players were going here and there and staff were going to dinners and I was just like ‘wow, we never did any of that at Hawthorn’,” he said.

“They were coteries and outside influences and on the whole they were extremely supportive. There were elements that were challenging within that, but on the whole, they were really supportive. But it felt different. You go back to Hawthorn, and it feels like family. It does feel like business (at Carlton), and that should not have a huge effect on the football team because you surround yourself with a group of people who have direct influence.

“But that outer layer is there. It’s part of the culture and that’s still a challenge to block it out.”

Russell is a powerful personality.

He is not just a strength coach, he is a mind coach, he is an agitator when needed and a figure who thrives when he has his fingers in every pie that affects a player’s performance.

Recovery, performance, psychology, diet, attitude.

He told Sacked that as the injuries mounted up his influence waned until it was time for him to move on.

For the first time in his final season he did not have autonomy to fulfil his program across the entire club.

If players were injured they went into a rehab group which he did not control.

“Look, it’s pretty simple. There was a leadership structure set up. It was a different leadership structure. My position was different to what it had been,” he told Sacked.

“It sort of evolved over the last two years. There were lots of views in the football department. The leadership structure was quite flat. I wouldn’t set it up like that.

“That’s where I wasn’t at my best. The (2021) review didn’t do good things for lots of people at the football club. Lots of people went to ‘self’ after that review. Self preservation. So any time we were challenged people went to self from that point of time.

“In the end the responsibility was diffused across many different voices. I did an internal review on everything we were doing (with the injury concerns).

“I was robust on myself, I was robust on everything. I tapped into everything. So I would challenge people around what, ‘What are we doing with recruiting? What are we doing with how we are playing? This is what I am seeing’. And some people didn’t like that.

“The program had the least amount of ‘me’ in it than ever in the last year. You are told to stay in your lane.

“Prior to that I had people backing me and I could go where I needed within the football department. People become uncomfortable with that.”

He says Carlton’s injury crisis last year was no surprise — of the players who got injured in-season their average pre-season completion rate was just 58 per cent.

Adam Cerra’s repeat hamstring concerns were an outrider given he had done a mostly full pre-season.

The club limped into September with six changes in the elimination final against Brisbane as the Blues rolled the dice by playing Tom De Koning as the sub off a fractured foot and Sam Docherty off an early-season ACL tear.

“Even with all those challenges, I still believe we could win it last year. But too many guys had missed out on too much connection and lack of belief. The issue with (Docherty) was a performance issue. Could he do what he needed to under the bright lights? It was a risk but the player was very robust. He is an extraordinary character and with his ability to perform in the past, we went back and said could he perform?

“Physically we knew he was in great shape. We were happier for him to do the job than someone else, otherwise we don’t play him. We were all on board together. Everyone was on the same page. We outlined the risk and reward four months earlier and basically we just kept ticking those boxes. That’s what we do.”