Radio host Tom Elliott talks footy, family life and the future of Melbourne

Carlton needs to recognise that it hasn’t survived the transition into a full professional draft era of football, says passionate fan Tom Elliott. And this is what went wrong for the struggling club.

Tom Elliott from 3AW with his wife Elise and daughter Ava. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

Radio host Tom Elliott fears his beloved Blues could lose a generation of young fans as the club remains mired in mediocrity.

Elliott — the son of former Carlton president John — also revealed his father’s work absences while growing up spurred him to be there for his own daughter, nine-year-old Ava.

“I want to be a visible presence in her life, which to be fair to my father he was not, he was often away — that was just his way of doing things,” he told the Sunday Herald Sun.

“And I think he regrets that a bit now.”

“You only have one life to live — make the most of it as you just don’t know.”

Elliott has notched up his seventh year in the drive seat at 3AW and has established his own name, despite his famous parents — the former Elders chief and Carlton president of two decades and former Liberal politician Lorraine Elliott.

Elliott was in the news recently after speaking out on turmoil at his beloved Blues, and found himself rejecting suggestions he may be running for the board.

John and Tom Elliott. Picture: ABC

He maintains he has no current intention to run for the board. But it doesn’t mean he is shying from speaking up as a fan.

“There is a real fear among older fans that their children aren’t interested in going to the footy. Because all they do is go and see losses. And that’s a real problem. You can lose a generation,” Elliott said of his reason for speaking out.

“They won’t barrack just because their parents tell them to, because their dad tells them to, their mum tells them to.”

“They want to go to the footy and know they have a chance of singing the song at the end of the day.”

Elliott thinks the course back to greatness is recognising Carlton has not survived the transition into a full professional draft era of AFL footy.

“What Carlton has done particularly badly is let go (of) players that were loyal and good servants to the club for the mirage of ‘Oh, there is something better out there’,” he said.

Tom Elliott from 3AW with his wife Elise and daughter Ava. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

“Zach Tuohy at Geelong, Eddie Betts at Adelaide, Mitch Robinson at Brisbane, Jeff Garlett at Melbourne, Lachie Henderson at Geelong … and I’ve spoken to someone at the AFL who says, ‘Well, there is your Carlton team right there’.”

Family is clearly important to Elliott. He said he thinks he is more like his mother Lorraine, who passed away in 2014. Elliott met his wife Elise, a journalist, after she bought a compilation CD he produced in the mid-1990s of British independent music.

The two met for a coffee, soon started swapping mix tapes of favourite music and the rest is history.

Elise says it was Bill Withers’ Lovely Day that really won Tom over.

Elliott said his father, now 77, is “all right” after last year’s health scare, although admits it's hard to give him advice.

“I have a very good relationship with dad. (But) would he take my advice on health issues? Almost certainly not. He has given up smoking, which is good. But he has half a century of doing it behind him and that can’t be undone.”

Elliott’s own path to radio has been a unique one in a career that spanned his Oxford education to working in investment banking in Canada and the US. And then running his own hedge fund.

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It gives him a unique perspective on how Melbourne is developing and what it needs next. He thinks we need to better plan for our growing population.

“The biggest thing that makes me angry about politics at a state level is we don’t really set plans for it — we don’t articulate.”

“I would say, ‘Righto, we do the numbers and say the population will be this by 2030, 40, 50 — work backwards — what do we need?

“Do we need another major airport? Do we finally need to link up all of Melbourne’s freeways that bizarrely were built all terminating on the edge of the CBD?”

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