AFL: Former Carlton captain Marc Murphy says club should never have appointed Mick Malthouse

Former Carlton captain Marc Murphy has opened up on the ugly tenure of premiership coach Mick Malthouse at the Blues.

Carlton powerbrokers Steven Trigg, Marc Murphy, Mick Malthouse and Mark LoGiudice in 2014. Picture: Mark Stewart

Former Carlton captain Marc Murphy has unloaded on the Blues’ mistake to sack Brett Ratten as coach and declared his replacement Mick Malthouse was “not in it for the right reasons”.

Murphy retired at the end of the 2021 season after playing 300 games for Carlton.

He revealed that when he was appointed club captain in 2013, Malthouse told him to his face that he wanted someone else in the role.

Malthouse won just 20 of the 54 games he coached at Carlton before being sacked.

Murphy said it all went “pear-shaped” at the end of the premiership winner’s tenure.

“I haven’t really listened to too much of what Mick has had to say post leaving the footy club because what’s the point, but he probably would’ve said that he would’ve chosen a different captain at the time and he even said that to me at the time when I got appointed captain,” Murphy told Dylan Buckley on the Dyl and Friends podcast.

“He would’ve gone with someone else, but because they weren’t going to be featuring regularly in the side, he couldn’t go down that path.

“So initially when you get told you’re captain, you’d like to be a positive period, so it wasn’t a great start, but that was his prerogative.

“Would’ve been nice for him to turn up to a leadership group meeting now and again.

Mick Malthouse didn’t work out at Carlton, even with superstar Chris Judd on-board. Picture: Michael Klein

“But there’s no point me coming out and bashing Mick Malthouse, he’s obviously one of the great coaches of all time.

“He’s got the record for longest coaching, so what am I going to do coming out and slamming him? But his time at Carlton, I don’t think he was really in it for the right reasons, and once it turned pear-shaped, it was all about him unfortunately at the end and I was left to be thrown at the bus quite a bit.

“He was obviously a terrific coach, but for Carlton and for me and the boys, it just didn’t work out.”

Murphy said Carlton officials made the wrong decision to sack club champion Ratten, now the St Kilda coach, after he guided the Blues to one kick one kick away from a preliminary final in 2011 before a less productive 2012 season.

“It was definitely the wrong decision,” he said.

“We were stiff, we missed by two or three points against West Coast and then, I know it’s all ifs and buts, but you get through that game and you play Geelong at the ‘G’ the following week and we’d played against them and we were too quick for the Cats.

“You never know in a prelim what happens, but I thought we had their measure at that point, we were probably a bit more dynamic.

Marc Murphy (left) says Carlton should never have sacked Brett Ratten (right).

“Our forwards were pretty incredible. The three amigos (Chris Yarran, Jeff Garlett and Eddie Betts), we had Jarrad Waite, some pretty talented players in there. They wouldn’t have got overawed by the occasion because they just played footy and had great chemistry down there.

“And then the decision to get Mick was like, ‘He can take us to the next level’, that was the thinking with the hierarchy at the time, but I just think the support needed to be better around Ratts to help him. I think that was the way forward.

“I know hindsight, it’s easy to say that now because everyone at the time was thinking Mick was one year out of coaching, he’s the guy who’s been proven to get teams to grand finals, you could understand that decision at the time.

“I think the support and the communication needed to be better at that time.

“I was never one for going upstairs and getting involved in all of that chat.

“I was dealing with coaches, not necessarily getting involved with CEOs and the rest of it … but I think it was a bad move.”

Originally published as AFL: Former Carlton captain Marc Murphy says club should never have appointed Mick Malthouse