Tom Elliott, son of former Carlton president John Elliott, slams the club as ‘anti-democratic’

Tom Elliott and Mick Malthouse say the Carlton board is in desperate need of new faces and new ideas, but the broadcaster is prevented from running for a seat.

Broadcaster Tom Elliott has ruled out a Carlton board challenge but has taken aim at its “anti-democratic” processes.

Elliott, the son of 20-year Blues boss John Elliott, said president Mark LoGiudice and “one or two other directors” should follow sacked coach Brendon Bolton out the door.

“They clearly need some fresh blood on that board,” Elliott said.

“There have been too many bad decisions, but the way the nominations committee works, it’s almost impossible to get on.”

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Changes to Carlton’s constitution approved by members four years ago requires prospective directors to win the approval of a club-appointed nominations committee.

“I don’t know if people understood the ramifications of it, but I thought it was terrible,” Elliott told the Herald Sun.

“It just means that someone who is not an ally of the current board will struggle to get on, and that’s why you end up with the sameness of thinking about issues.”

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Coaching great Mick Malthouse revealed he had “very little” to do with LoGiudice during his three-year stint at the club.

Malthouse was sacked after just 54 games in Round 8, 2015.

“And as I said to him, ‘Mark, you haven’t spoken to me in a month’ and he said, ‘Oh, no, no. It’s been three weeks’.

“That probably says it all,” he said.

Malthouse said his premiership era at West Coast was presided over by boards that “added value but did not get stale”.

“They (Carlton) have got to have a really close look at what they want out of a football club,” Malthouse said.

“It’s no use just saying, ‘We’ll get a first-round pick here, we can go to this coach there and go and get the best recruiter and God knows what else.

Tom Elliott won’t run for the Carlton board because of its “anti-democratic” processes.

“As a coach, you are a servant of the football club, and totally and utterly at the mercy of a good or a bad board.

“I got put in at Carlton with Stephen Kernahan as president and Greg Swann as CEO. The moment they left, the vulnerability set in, because you knew then that the new king had his idea of what he wanted.

“In Bolton’s case, the CEO (Steven Trigg) is gone but the president is still there. He came out a week ago and said, ‘No, I’ll stick with him’ and then a week later he sacks him.

“So where does the accountability start and where does it finish?

“When the pressure goes up, the first to blink will be the board.

“The strongest board of recent date has probably been Richmond when Damien Hardwick was under massive pressure. He’s not a Richmond player, unlike (Nathan) Buckley at Collingwood, and Richmond said, ‘We’re not blinking because the media want blood’ and Damien Hardwick came through the other side of it.

Former Blues coach Mick Malthouse said he had “very little” to do with president Mark LoGiudice. Picture: Getty Images

“I knew what had to happen at Carlton, but when Kernahan and Swann left, it was always going to be tough work to get what I wanted.

“If you haven’t got the president and CEO who put you on there, then you’re only waiting for time to run out, really.

“On reflection, one of the most remarkable statements was made at the beginning of 2015, after we’d had what I thought was a terrific pre-season, and I ran into Steven Trigg and he said to me, ‘What would happen if you got run over by a bus tomorrow — who should be the coach?’

“This was in January and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s not the sort of question you should be asking a coach in January I wouldn’t have thought.

“You think, ‘Hmm. That’s interesting.”