Tom De Koning, Michael Voss and the ramifications of another potentially wasted Carlton season
Carlton’s stuttering 2025 campaign is teetering on the brink – and what happens from here is vital for a number of reasons. Is it too late for some? GLENN McFARLANE takes a closer look.
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Carlton’s stuttering 2025 campaign is teetering on the brink and the ramifications of another potentially wasted season could yet have serious consequences on a number of fronts.
Just 64 days after torching North Melbourne by 82 points in a Good Friday mauling, the Blues were outworked, outplayed and out-thought in an extraordinary 93-point turnaround from the last time these teams met.
The coach Michael Voss is feeling the heat after the 11-point loss to North Melbourne on Saturday at the MCG.
Voss’s seething three-quarter-time address to his players revealed his frustrations, which at least brought a last-term response when the game was already long gone.
The players, as Sam Docherty revealed after his team failed against a younger, more daring North Melbourne, were “really frustrated” by the inability to string together four quarters after coughing up 12 goals to three in the middle terms before kicking five goals to nil in the last term.
The Navy Blue natives are getting very, very restless. They booed their team at halftime and three-quarter-time when they trailed by 46 points, and plenty of Carlton fans left well before the final siren.
“It’s frustrating, just not doing what we are supposed to do for long enough,” a downcast Docherty said in the Blues’ rooms.
“(There are) elements of our game (which) are working well. (In the) first quarter we had the game on our terms, and then to dish up what we did for a couple of quarters and then leave it to the last quarter to start playing with any dare is really frustrating.
“It’s been a tale of our year.
“We just can’t string four quarters together in what we are supposed to be doing, so we lick our wounds and we have to go again in five days.”
The confidence-sapped Blues will take on Port Adelaide at Adelaide Oval on Thursday night, with their season on the line, having lost touch with the lower reaches of the top eight.
And with a tough back end to the season – which includes five of the next nine games against current top-eight sides – it has turned the external pressure valve back on the Blues and Voss.
There are a myriad of questions which can only be answered later in the year, with the club’s 6-8 win-loss record leaving them with virtually no wriggle room in the back end of the season.
What would missing the finals mean for the coach?
He has the paper security of a contract next season, but he also knows the man who appointed him, Brian Cook, is in the process of handing the keys over to a pragmatic Graham Wright, who overlooked Voss in the chase for a new Collingwood coach in late 2021.
Cook and Wright were in the sombre Blues rooms after the game as the disappointed players were consoled by their families and friends.
The spectre of seemingly available premiership coaches John Longmire and Adam Simpson also puts a ‘watch this space’ on Voss’ job for the remainder of the season.
The Blues have preached stability as the cornerstone of this new Carlton, and while that might still ring true at season’s end, at the very least it could mean a fresh look at the coaching panel around Voss, if he remains at the helm.
What does all this mean for free agent Tom De Koning, who is wrestling with the biggest decision of his footy career – to take a King’s ransom from St Kilda or stick with his mates at Carlton?
“TDK” is happy at Carlton, but there are almost $5m reasons (the difference between the two offers across seven years) why the Saints are up to their eyeballs in their race for the ruckman.
If the Blues were pushing for finals – they are currently two games outside the top eight – or building towards a flag, you could understand why De Koning might covet the hope of silverware above dollar signs.
Does all that change if the bottom falls out of the Blues’ season?
What would another wasted season – this club has made only 10 finals series since their last flag 30 years ago – mean for the top-end talent who are under-producing and the bottom-tier of players who are struggling to make an impact?
And what of the game style that, in jest, could see the Blues sponsored by a Sav Nat company, given the extra kilometres they traverse in going backwards, sideways and to all parts of the ground in a too often dour approach that has fans almost pulling their hair out?
Surely after what happened in a more daring final term, that style has to be binned right now. It’s time to take some risks!
Docherty said: “(At times) we wanted to try to hold on to the ball, but ideally you don’t go backwards and stay backwards, and stretch the ground even further than it needed to be.”
“It is all of us (to fix it). We are all feeling it exactly the same way, (it’s been a) frustrating year so far, but we believe we have enough to challenge (in) the back end of the year.”
With remaining games against Port Adelaide (twice), Collingwood, the Brisbane Lions, Melbourne, Hawthorn, Fremantle, Gold Coast and Essendon to come, the Blues must win at least seven of them to guarantee playing off in September for a third straight year.
On what we have seen so far, that looks like a bridge too far!
Originally published as Tom De Koning, Michael Voss and the ramifications of another potentially wasted Carlton season
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