Blues coach Michael Voss sits down with Mark Robinson ahead of Carlton’s semi-final against Melbourne
Michael Voss’ first stint as a coach taught him plenty, which is how the Lions legend was able to weather an ugly storm that was circling in the middle of 2023. Voss chats to Mark Robinson.
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Not surprisingly, Michael Voss arrived at the Barton Milk Bar cafe in Hawthorn in shorts, T-shirt, a cap and a smile on his dial.
He looked and sounded like a bloke who didn’t have a worry in the world. It was only Tuesday after all. Come Friday, the anxiety of preparing for, and this time coaching in, a semi-final at the MCG in front of 90,000 fans will take his mind to wherever that crazy world takes coaches.
Despite the scale of the occasion and the result, Voss will still try to smile. It has been his trademark behaviour since he started to coach from the sidelines and since Carlton resurrected its season.
This is big. It is big for Carlton. It is big for Voss. But he is adamant it’s far bigger for Carlton.
In the midst of winning just one match and losing eight from rounds 5-13, Carlton did an un-Carlton-like thing – it supported the coach and the program.
The season turned and the Blues got rolling. Voss got smiling and if Carlton is not the story of the season, it is damn close.
“It’s not about me,’’ Voss said. “I have a story behind it, but it’s about our club, about our people.’’
Voss can’t sit here and say exactly what prompted the change.
He knows when it happened.
It was the second quarter of the round 14 clash against Gold Coast at the MCG and the Blues trailed by 10 points.
“I can remember coming back to the interchange bench at quarter-time and thinking, ‘What’s going to happen here?’” he said.
“And we came out and kicked 9.3. It happened in a wave.’’
In the weeks and months leading up to that spectacular second quarter, Voss found himself in a position not unlike the final weeks and months of his failed stint as coach at the Brisbane Lions.
His team couldn’t win games.
But instead of punting him, Carlton planted its flag alongside him.
Voss is a man of immense integrity so it’s safe to assume his coaching is underpinned by the same quality. Another assumption is that he’s not a rabid tactical coach. He played with an uncompromising mental and physical toughness. He was footy’s Action Man. As coach, you suspect he asks his players to be Action Men.
That integrity around simply competing – work hard, keep the faith, stay true to yourself – helped Voss confront the dark days this season.
It’s why it was “important” – which was his favourite word on this day – to remain upbeat when the shock-jock commentariats and irate Carlton fans were losing their minds, and his team was losing matches.
Every day, Voss had to push himself to be positive.
“One of the really important questions you should ask yourself is what kind of person do I want to be today?’’ he said. “There’s an element of getting to control how I want to be rather than be reactive to what the environment is, or people telling me what I should be.
“So, if I’m going to influence them (the players), how do I influence them? How do I want my body language to be? How do I want my energy to be? And sometimes that energy is not what you’re feeling.’’
When the season turned, the forced positiveness became real, and the players were encouraged to “express themselves’’.
“What’s important is for us to be ourselves,’’ Voss said. “I’m naturally passionate. I love the game. I love coaching. I certainly love winning. I’m naturally that way and we encourage our players to be that way. I find that when you’re in that space, that’s when you can fully express yourself.
“When you’re quite comfortable you sing your own story. You know who you are, you can be comfortably judged, and you just come and express all your strengths … that’s really powerful. We try to live that when people are constantly making judgments of us.’’.
Judgments? The Blues were the whipping boys of the competition for almost three months.
Voss maintained the bloody-thirsty noise on the outside was far from the reasonably calm albeit frustrating environment on the inside.
“People think you make up things, but I do think it was a storm on the outside but calm on the inside,’’ he said.
“Inside, the club had real stability and resolve to work through the problem.
“I never ever felt it was me and the club, or me and the players. I always felt it was the club and everyone else.
“One of the most significant things to come out of the year was the resolve and stability. And there could’ve been a couple of moments there where it could’ve gone the other way. But it did feel within the playing group, within our people, that we were heading in the right direction.
“You always have an element of doubt (as coach), but we were confident we could provide the right environment for our players. The thing we couldn’t do was perform well.’’
That doubt, however grave or fleeting, confronted Voss after every loss.
“When it hasn’t gone your way, you assess it, like, how did that happen? But I never walked back into the place feeling like we couldn’t give great clarity,” he said.
“We shouldn’t downplay it, among the coaches, among the players, there were a lot of conversations to get there and a lot of information we needed to take in so clarity could be provided.’’
Separating what was real and not real, and completely ignoring the outside noise, was not an issue for Voss. He didn’t read papers or listen to the radio.
“Time has taught me that the environment on the outside is all about the extremes, it’s about the hero and the villain, and we have to operate somewhere in the middle and we’re always trying to find what’s real and what’s unreal,” he said.
“And it’s probably more relevant at this football club than any other football club I’ve been a part of. So, you use words like process and going to work on, like, what is the Xs and Os, but this was not solved on just Xs and Os. It was also about team dynamics and how the relationships were between our people.
“The rewarding part is that it was solved by everyone.
“Despite the outside noise, we chose the direction we wanted to go after, we didn’t choose the direction someone else told us we needed to follow and I’m pretty proud of that.
“They are two different worlds. And they have to be separated. The game is over analysed and our reality is we don’t need to live in that space.’’
And if coaches and clubs did live in that space, Voss said “we’d change our game style every week’’.
“We’re all in a world now where change is OK, that if you don’t like what’s happening then change. That’s not how resilience is built. It’s built through persistence, adaptation, problem-solving and embracing complexity,’’ he said.
“We’ve had to take information on at times and some of that information has been really hurtful, like losing to Collingwood last year. That hurt and that has an impact.”
This year, he said, the disappointment was more about the club not playing to its own expectations.
The Blues started the season with a draw and three wins before Adelaide gave them a shellacking by 10 goals in round 5 at Adelaide Oval.
“It was not living up to our own expectations … and we struggled to really enjoy where we were,’’ he said. “And as the losses mounted we’d go deeper into that. But what gave me great confidence, and what gives me great confidence, is that this group cares. I’ve seen lack of character and I’ve seen great character and this group has great character.’’
During the run of defeats, Voss was level-headed in his press conferences and did not single out players.
“Everyone else was judging them, why did I need to judge them? It was about belief and confidence and getting to work,” he said.
“It doesn’t mean we weren’t having accountable conversation, but at the same time you have to show belief in them.’’
That belief began as a trickle and is now a torrent, so much so, the expectations within are what you would expect from a team that is one win shy of a preliminary final.
“I don’t want success to be defined by the fact that we made finals, and they clap us off the MCG because we tried,’’ he said. “No, that’s not success for us, we feel we’ve got more in us.”
Pointedly, Voss said the change at Carlton did not come with a “silver bullet’’ inside a six-week period. Instead, it was 18 months in the making, from when the Blues launched their review, and it was 12 years in the making for himself.
For the club, it is “generational change’’ led by president Luke Sayers, CEO Brian Cook and the board, and a playing list which needs more time playing together.
“Harry (McKay) and Charlie (Curnow) have not played a lot of football together. Our back seven settled in the second half of the year, but it’s lacked cohesion because there’s been too much change through that part of the ground,” he said.
“Blake Acres is new. Ollie Hollands is 19. Adam Cerra and George Hewett have only come in in the past 15 months.
“The group does need a little bit of time to play together and that’s why these moments are so big, playing finals together, and that’s why moments going through some tough stuff together are actually important. We are forging our identity together.
“And the belief you have in what you’re doing wasn’t formulated in the past six weeks either. “It was in the eight years I was forming my craft and working though what coach am I going to be.’’
The Brisbane Lions sacking gutted him. The Port Adelaide experience under Ken Hinkley revitalised him.
“Brisbane … was a significant hit,’’ Voss said. “And it was the right hit. I don’t look back at that as a regrettable period of time. I look at it and say, ‘OK, it wasn’t my time, it wasn’t the right time, but it’s formed a really important part of who I am now.
“I have my own experiences but the club has its own experiences and that goes into the story, and it’s been a great story to tell. And our group is well and truly ready for what comes next, this year or next year, and I say that with great confidence.’’
The Blues have star players – and traditionally they have been perched on pedestals at Carlton – but it’s been the blue-collar Blues who have transformed this team.
Voss doesn’t like the term “role players’’, because he says it sounds demeaning or less important than the big-name teammates.
“My experience with great teams is there’s a (Matthew) Cottrell, a (David) Cuningham, a (Lachie) Fogarty and an Acres and when all these guys get the job done you become a more reliable footy team. And then brilliance emerges,’’ he said.
“Yeah, role players … that’s why meaning is so important to words. In the future, I’d like to think when we’re talking about a role player, we define what that is, what does it mean to you? It actually has status in our footy team. We’ve had to work for what we’re getting despite the assumptions that there has been talent there.’’
The Blues couldn’t be more ready for Friday night.
A preliminary final beckons, which is outrageous to say in September when you remember what was happening in May and July.
For Voss, it’s not about him. But a win would return him to the Gabba to take on his one-time Lions. And what a story that would be.
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