By Michael Gleeson
It’s the middle of winter. Your team is in the toilet. Everyone is a critic, and you get some of the blame. The bloke who has been lumping around the forward line getting in the way and not helping much is about to go to another club – St Kilda for goodness sake – for more money than you are getting. A lot more.
A bloke who used to be at your club is running around enjoying himself at the Western Bulldogs. Everything looks easier somewhere else.
Charlie Curnow might have considered a move to the Gold Coast Suns, but it won’t happen.Credit: Stephen Kiprillis via Getty Images
And then you see it. The ad. You flick a page and there it is: a picture of a beach. And sun. And you think, bloody hell, Byron Bay was beautiful during the bye. I just wonder ...
Charlie Curnow would like to play for Gold Coast. Not that he has formally told Carlton or the Gold Coast that.
It won’t happen. Curnow is evidently not enjoying himself at Carlton at the moment, not that many players would be, and he is dipping his toe in the water, the tempting, warm, azure Gold Coast water, to see if a move could happen. It won’t.
Firstly, because if any rigorous thinking was put into the mechanics of it beforehand, Curnow would realise Gold Coast already has three players playing in his position, two of them young local boys. He is better than all three of them, but, still, they already have them.
The Suns also have no draft picks to trade (they need some for another local academy kid likely to go No.1 in this year’s draft) if that’s what the Blues asked for. And no money in their salary cap to fit him in without shopping someone out. To bring him in, the Suns would have to trade someone of value out. The only logical player to fit that bill would be Ben King because he plays in Curnow’s position and is on comparable money, so they’d have to look at a straight swap or a three-way trade with another club. None of which is being looked at.
Coincidentally, King is managed by the same company as Curnow. Though so too was Christian Petracca when he agitated for a move from Melbourne that never eventuated.
Nevertheless, King is happy on the Coast and they are happy with him. He is also close mates with Matt Rowell who just re-signed.
But the next point is the bigger one. Charlie is contracted to Carlton for four more years, and, like Petracca, whether he wants to leave or not, his club and his contract have the final say.
Carlton has dismissed the idea of him being traded. Curnow’s a Carlton man. Always will be. Can’t be more emphatic than that, Michael Voss said defiantly.
The only wrinkle in that comment is Curnow being an unhappy Carlton man and perhaps not wanting to be a Carlton man any more.
There were rumblings of Curnow’s unhappiness at Carlton for some time this year, prompting Sydney and Geelong to keep an interested, if pessimistic, gauge on the temperature of that unease. The Swans, like the Suns, make for an appealing off-Broadway, surf lifestyle option for him. Geelong has the tempter of being near Curnow’s family and offering a life on the water of Victoria’s Surf Coast where he grew up. However, it must be noted that the water is much more pleasant north of the border, or borders.
Sydney, and Geelong, would throw a lot at Curnow and Carlton to get the deal done, though probably not enough to even make the Blues turn their head. Carlton would require something starting with the initials Errol Gulden from Sydney to consider it. That’s not likely to happen.
Out-of-contract ruckman Tom De Koning is considering a big-money offer from St Kilda, while Charlie Curnow’s future has also become the subject of speculation despite his long-term contract at the Blues.Credit: Getty Images
Every club has players they would entertain trading and a select group who they would never trade. Curnow sits in the latter category in normal circumstances, and amid the turmoil the Blues have faced this year, it is even less likely. He’s the player you build a team around, not one you trade to fund a rebuild. Harry McKay on the other hand …
The Blues can dismiss this Curnow story as a bit of nonsense. They will know it’s not uncommon for players to hate it and want out of their club when things spiral like they have at Carlton this season, but also that this can often be turned around.
They will hold Curnow to his contract, then wrap their arms around him to show him more love, and things will settle down and go away by next season. Curnow had three surgeries in a crappy pre-season and then his – and his club’s – season went downhill quickly. The Blues will reckon on things being better next year.
But externally the narrative reads differently, and the image being projected is more damaging. It is not about whether Charlie stays or goes – the contract will sort that – but an idea has now been created of Carlton as an unhappy team and place at the moment. That PR jolt is the worst part of this story from Carlton’s perspective.
It suggests an unhappy locker room when the best player wants out at a time Tom De Koning is set to leave and Jack Silvagni – a third-generation Blue carrying one of the heaviest names in the club’s history – has yet to re-sign and is considering going to Collingwood, of all clubs.
Curnow was probably not putting that degree of thought into it. He just liked the idea of getting out, living near the beach and life being simpler. Oh, for the simpler life.
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