Carlton's leadership group has made a surprising decision to avoid discussing their finals aspirations this year, instead choosing to focus on a week-by-week approach.
Despite their recent winning form that has catapulted them into top-10 calculations and a shot at the newly created Wildcard Round, 7SPORT expert Tom Morris says the club leaders want to “stay in the moment” and continue to evolve “week by week”.
Morris revealed on Channel 7’s The Agenda Setters that a meeting was held at Carlton headquarters on Tuesday, with key players such as Patrick Cripps, Jacob Weitering, Sam Walsh, Adam Cerra, and Ollie Florent all involved, as well as key coaches. In the meeting, the players were asked what they wanted to target in the back half of the season.
“The message from the players back to the officials at the club is we know the Wildcard is there but we don’t want to talk about it,” Morris said. “This is about winning week by week and doing the best we can on a weekly basis.”
But Morris said the club was not planning to promote younger players over senior ones — which could potentially see them drop down the ladder and in turn improve their draft capital to help them with father-son selections at this year’s draft.
“They understand — and this was said in the meeting today as well — that they were pretty poor against Essendon. They got the job done but they were pretty poor and they don’t want to get ahead of themselves at all,” Morris said.
However, the refusal to set a target has drawn criticism from AFL legends Luke Hodge and Dale Thomas.
Thomas said: “Is it not slightly strange that they wouldn’t openly say we want to go after the Wildcard?”
Morris: “They want to go after the wins on a weekly basis and if that leads to a Wildcard then that’s great, but they don’t want to look too far in.”
Thomas: “But is that almost just becoming an acceptance of, ‘oh well, it is what it is’, rather than let’s actually shoot for something and really aim and aspire to something ... so every time we come in it’s ‘this is what we’re here for’ ...”
Hodge was even more scathing and questioned the mentality of the group. “So that’s saying that the players are scared to actually aim for something,” he said. “If that’s the mindset of the leadership group, no wonder why it filters through to the rest of the players. They’re sitting here after Round 14 saying that they want to take it one week at a time and not even talk about playing finals or a Wildcard ... it’s baffling.”
Kane Cornes noted that Carlton had won their last four games with reduced expectations, but struggled earlier in the season when the pressure was high. “When the expectation, when the pressure is on at the start of the year, when you have high hopes for the season, the performances were poor,” Cornes said. “The minute the coach goes, circuit breaker, no pressure, we’re going to start playing good footy again.”
Thomas compared it to his own experience at Collingwood, where captain Nick Maxwell declared within the first month of the 2010 season that they wanted to win the grand final. He said if the players didn’t want to buy in, they were out.
As it happened, Josh Fraser in that Collingwood team lost his position to Darren Jolly and didn’t play in the grand finals (one was a draw, the other Collingwood won). Fraser is of course now Carlton’s interim coach, and his future remains unclear. While the club likes his level-headed and balanced approach, Fraser has indicated he’s not ready to be considered for the permanent role, even if asked to go through the process. However, Morris said his stance may be softening after four consecutive wins.
