Ultimate player ratings: Jon Ralph and Glenn McFarlane rate every Carlton player

Patrick Cripps once carried Carlton on his shoulders, now there’s three Blues ahead of him in our ultimate player ratings. JON RALPH and GLENN MCFARLANE say that’s a good thing.

Carlton AFL player ratings 2024

Patrick Cripps kicked off the 2023 season as the reigning Brownlow Medallist, a player familiar with carrying his entire club on his shoulders as a three-time All Australian and four-time best-and-fairest winner.

As Carlton’s finals surge came up short in a preliminary final, he ended that season with a relatively quiet finals series and an unfamiliar fifth-placing in the best-and-fairest.

Sam Walsh’s monster finals series was breathtaking in its impact and consistency, establishing him as the new Blues midfielder to call upon in a crisis.

It was impossible not to assess it as a passing of the baton.

Criteria: Prediction of their 2024 performance based on their 2023 season, expected improvement and role in their side.

For Carlton fans desperate to stop the club’s reliance upon one man in the midfield that development was glorious.

Walsh’s full powers were on show as Blake Acres thrived under the September spotlight and Cripps still won coaches’ votes for his display against Melbourne.

But as the changing of the guard gathers speed, it is still worth asking the question.

Is Patrick Cripps still Carlton’s best player?

Indeed, if you lined all the Blues stars up against a wall would you even pick him in the top three?

Michael Voss certainly won’t waste any time pondering an answer.

If he stopped to think about it, he would realise just how positive a development it is for his brilliant young list.

It’s no longer a one-man Patrick Cripps show at Carlton. Picture: Getty Images

At his disposal he has Walsh, surely now a top-10 AFL player alongside footy’s most dynamic forward in Charlie Curnow.

He has Jacob Weitering coming off a best-and-fairest win even as he battles a serious preseason calf tear.

He has Adam Cerra, coming off a year in which he led the best-and-fairest until injury intervened.

Voss has on-ball depth, with George Hewett and Matt Kennedy, then a quartet of exciting young midfielders in Ollie and Elijah Hollands, Matt Cottrell and second-year wingman Jaxon Binns.

And he has a captain in Cripps not yet 29 and like himself caring only for team success after so many glittering individual achievements.

Cripps still played 97 per cent midfield last year and won over 50 per cent of his ball in the contest, but the Blues will believe the Hollands brothers can play some inside mid to take the heat off Walsh and Cripps.

For all of its improvement in 2023 the Blues will believe Harry McKay, Tom De Koning, Jack Martin and Jesse Motlop all have vast improvement as Mitch McGovern tries to find consistency in successive seasons and Zac Williams returns from an ACL tear.

So as Walsh and Curnow establish themselves in the AFL’s elite, can Cripps reprise his stunning 2022 season and end the year holding aloft the premiership cup?