Fed up: Carlton powerbrokers, life members unload on president Luke Sayers, board and club
A billionaire Carlton powerbroker says that Ross Lyon ‘wanted to come to Carlton and we had him’. But because of one ‘silly’ board member, Ross walked. Go inside the unrest at the Blues.
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Billionaire Carlton powerbroker Bruce Mathieson has unloaded on Blues president Luke Sayers, chief executive Brian Cook and the club’s “weak” board.
Mathieson said coach Michael Voss was going to be the one who “copped it in the neck” because of the club’s systemic bad management as he criticised the decision to retain football boss Brad Lloyd in 2021.
“He (Voss) is going to be slaughtered because the Carlton board is so weak,” Mathieson said.
“I’m not trying to chop Vossy in half. I just think we are run pathetically. It’s a real shame.”
“Put it this way, I will never, ever go out of my way to help Carlton again while any of these people are still in power.”
Asked about whether the club might try to cut ties with the lucrative poker machine licences he has gifted the club, Mathieson said: “They possibly will try because they are complete and utter imbeciles.”
“Luke Sayers is the president – he’s the boss and should take full responsibility for all of it. He’s the bloke who is supposed to bring home the bacon,” Mathieson said.
“Even Cooky, I thought he might be OK. But when you sit down and look at it, he was controlled by Frank Costa under his regime at Geelong.
“You see, there’s a million No. 2s and No. 3s in this world – but there are very, very few No. 1s who can make a decision and carry it out and get it done.
“And Cooky was lucky – he had Frank Costa as his boss, who guided him on every decision he ever made. He’s made no decisions at Carlton.
“I woudn’t have left (football boss Brad) Lloyd there for a start.
“I mean look at the difference in Collingwood since they went out and got a coach (Craig McRae). There’s been an incredible change since the old Collingwood establishment was chopped up. And that’s what we’ve got to have.
“I just don’t think there is a future under this management.”
Board agitator Vince Loccisano, who is a life member, former president of the Carltonians and advocate for Carlton Now, said the Blues’ coaching job was a “poisoned chalice”.
“If we go backwards and don’t make finals what does the Carlton board always do when we’re haemorrhaging? Do they say there should be an election of board positions, our plans have not been successful, the people we appointed have not turned out to be the right ones, we think we should resign?” Loccisano said.
“No. They sack people. There’s one scapegoat after another. They will stick the knife into Michael Voss just like they have every other predecessor because that’s the only thing they know how to do.
“This cycle has got to stop. The 28 years since Carlton won its last flag is starting to resemble what the dire teams of Fitzroy and even Richmond from 1980-2017.
“We’re starting to get close to that. We are in the longest premiership drought we have ever experienced.”
The embattled Blues have not played finals in a decade and have sacked coaches Wayne Brittain, Denis Pagan, Brett Ratten, Mick Malthouse, Brendon Bolton and David Teague this century.
On Saturday night Carlton faces Western Bulldogs before games against Collingwood, Sydney (SCG) and Melbourne in a hellish month that could define their season and the future of Voss.
Sayers has been a Blues director since 2012 and must depart next year after serving a maximum 12 years.
Mathieson’s nephew Craig Mathieson is on the board and a member of the club’s finance and audit subcommittee.
WHERE HAS IT GONE WRONG FOR THE BLUES?
Carlton great Percy Jones could barely believe his eyes when he sat down to watch last week’s match against Brisbane Lions.
“We had the ball plenty of times. But our kicking, Christ, it was atrocious,” the four-time premiership champion said.
“You look at some of those blokes and you think, Christ, how can they miss them?
“They obviously aren’t trying to miss them, are they? They’re trying to hit a player on the chest – if they’re aiming for an opposition player they are being successful.
“Maybe if they aimed for the opposition player then they’d hit Carlton.”
Champion Data’s kick rating has teenager Ollie Hollands, Zac Fisher, Patrick Cripps and Jack Silvagni as the worst offenders by foot this year.
But the Blues aren’t only missing targets on the grass.
STRATEGIC PLANS
Upstairs at Ikon Park a five-year strategic plan, The Carlton Way, was published in 2019 by then-chief executive Cain Liddle and then-president Mark LoGiudice targeting AFL and AFLW premierships by 2023.
But Liddle was sacked in 2021 and this year chief executive Brian Cook and current president Luke Sayers released a new five-year plan (2022-2027), targeting AFL and AFLW premierships by 2027.
In 2011 former president Stephen Kernahan and chief executive Greg Swann released the ‘Blue Print’ – a five-year plan aiming to deliver not one, but two AFL flags by 2015.
Kernahan and Swann left in 2014 and in the 2015 the Blues collected the wooden spoon, having gone through three coaches in the period where they were supposed to win two premierships.
Vince Loccisano, an advocate for Carlton Now and past president of powerful coterie group the Carltonians, slammed the rewrites.
“Carlton always comes up with these five-year plans. How many of them were seen through from go to whoa?” the life member said.
“How can they say that Voss needs to be held accountable for the team’s performance and yet they come up with a five-year program that neither Sayers, Cook or Voss himself will necessarily be there to see through?
“No doubt whoever takes over from them is gonna say, ‘Well, I’m the new president or I’m the new CEO or I’m the new senior coach. I want a new plan’.
“When Sayers and Cook came up with the latest one, I had to have a chuckle because I said, ‘Well, none of these guys are going to be there to be held accountable to it’.”
Cook’s plan focuses on becoming a values-based organisation. Loccisano said members had “more than had enough of all that” and called for transparency.
“Carlton comes up with all these fuzzy words like ‘Stability’ and ‘Relentless’,” he said.
“That to me is all fluff. Unless it comes with a strategic plan that’s laid out, that everyone can understand and everyone can follow, what is the point of all of those buzzwords?
“So it’s time to come clean. It’s time for the board from Sayers down to come clean, and if they’re not up to the task at the end of this year they should be saying, ‘You know what, our strategy failed and our appointments have failed’.”
When Sayers became president in 2021 and appointed dual Brownlow Medallist Greg Williams as football director — a move some have also questioned — he said Carlton expected to play finals last year.
“He has not gone back to those words. At the end of last year he was nowhere to be seen, nowhere to be heard,” Loccisano said.
“That to me is not leadership. I think a lot of Carlton people are entitled to feel very disappointed in that.
“If you're not prepared to follow it through when those things are not achieved well then they’re all full of piss and wind.”
THE LIST
Cook conceded the Blues had to focus on the draft in the next couple of years because the top-heavy salary cap was bursting.
Last year’s Herald Sun Rich List had Cripps, Jacob Weitering, Zac Williams, Harry McKay, Mitch McGovern, Adam Saad and Charlie Curnow in the top-100 paid players.
It was estimated those seven players banked more than $5 million – more than a third of the salary cap.
This year free agent Jack Silvagni and Tom De Koning are out of contract. Both could be lost to cashed-up rivals.
Billionaire Carlton powerbroker Bruce Mathieson highlighted two players who left last year.
“Look at (Liam) Stocker. He had about 12 or 14 marks (playing for St Kilda) over the weekend. He was killing them. But he’s under a good coach now,” Mathieson said.
“You look at bloody (Will) Setterfield at Essendon, they’re just like different players.
“They had all the potential in the world but were just badly, badly, badly coached.
MISSING ROSS LYON
Stocker’s coach at the Saints is Ross Lyon. In 2021 Sayers said on radio he spoke to Lyon for 45 minutes when coach David Teague was sacked. It was more like four hours and Lyon was considered a shoo-in for the job.
But when Lyon was told he must submit to the process he walked — and was successfully headhunted by the Saints last year. Mathieson hinted at a process gone wrong.
“Ross (Lyon) wanted to come to Carlton and we had him,” he said.
“But because of one silly person on the board it didn’t happen. And if that person becomes president, well that will be the end of my association with Carlton, I can tell you that.
“That will be it. I can’t be bothered anymore.”
It ultimately became a choice between Adam Kingsley and Michael Voss, the man who was also interviewed in 2019 but missed out to caretaker David Teague.
THE VOSS APPOINTMENT
Loccisano questioned how board member David Campbell was not chosen on the subcommittee that appointed Voss.
Campbell is a partner at Egon Zehnder, a global firm specialising in chief executive searches, board advisory and leadership.
“David Campbell’s meant to be a director who specialises in employment and people and culture. He wasn't even on the committee to select (Voss),” Loccisano said.
“Do you think that the appointment of Michael Voss was made for all the right reasons at the time? Do you think that the recommendations of the committee appointed to come up with the best candidate were all independent of the board?
“Or did the board appoint people who they knew were going to give them what they wanted?”
Voss’ first 29 games has produced 15 wins and a draw. Teague won 13. Teague lost two games by five goals or more while Voss has lost five.
“I just don't know that anything has really changed even since the days when they decided to have the review on David Teague, which ended up costing him his job,” Loccisano said.
“You could even argue Voss has had a lot more than his disposal player-wise, like McKay and Curnow playing in the same team together.
“Most Carlton people would be thinking we’re treading water at the moment and unless we find a way to go up a few gears and to really start turning it on against quality opposition we’re looking substandard.”
THE COMMENTARY
As Carlton became this week’s hot topic Nathan Buckley effectively said Voss was easy to coach against.
“Carlton’s game is taken away from them too easily by the opposition and Carlton don’t spend enough time taking the opposition’s game away from them,” Buckley said on SEN.
Speaking on Fox Footy, Garry Lyon said Charlie Curnow and Harry McKay were playing in the wrong spots and called for Voss to “maximise his superstars” and “weaponise” Curnow.
“They’ve got Harry McKay playing the Jeremy Cameron role and their (super) athlete, their Jeremy Cameron clone in Charlie Curnow, playing the Tom Hawkins role,” Lyon said.
“(Curnow’s) got everything they’re screaming out for (kicking inside 50) and he’s deployed in the wrong role.”
Tim Watson called for the handball-happy Sam Walsh to go to halfback.
The Blues have averaged 69 points outside of wins against West Coast and North Melbourne and since round 10 last year have won less games than Gold Coast, Essendon and Adelaide.
AFLW MESS
The Blues won just two AFLW games last season. Loccisano said the board should take responsibility.
“Here's the irony and hypocrisy for all members to see,” he said.
“The Carlton women's program, which has been in dire straits for three or four years now – we’ve seen top-class players leave the club, we’ve seen the team drop down the ladder, we’ve seen another review which has seen another coach (Daniel Harford) get sacked and another head of football sacrificed in Brett Munro.
“All these people have had to pay a price because they've been made accountable for the non-performance of that football program.
“Yet the person on the board, Patty Kinnersley, who was responsible for coming up with the program and implementing the program, how was she punished? She was promoted to the position of joint vice-president.”
WHO REPLACES SAYERS?
Sayers must depart in 2024 when he completes his maximum 12 years as a director.
In 2022 Loccisano successfully thwarted proposed changes to Carlton’s constitution that would’ve extended the minimum presidency from three to four years – granting Sayers an extra year – and allowed non-members to fill casual board vacancies.
Loccisano expected Sayers’ successor to come from the current board.
“It's a closed shop. It’s a boys’ club,” Loccisano said.
“The board never invites any other interest from outside of its own bubble of corporate heavyweights to take part in governing the club.
“In fact it discourages people from outside the connections and the networks within the current board members. The reality is that every person that’s ever nominated for a board position within the last 20 years has been bullied into not standing for the board, and they’ve succeeded in bullying those people to reverse their original decision to stand.
“Or if they haven‘t succeeded in getting those people to back off they have sought to discredit and diminish those people’s chances by imposing this independent nominations committee to basically say this person’s got a few skills but we can adequately cover the skills required by way of this board member that we’ve already nominated.
“They will just appoint Robert Priestley or someone like him to take over from Sayers because being head of JPMorgan means Priestley’s got the business credentials and networks to fit the bill for what they want.”
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