Effes wrote:
https://x.com/heraldsunsport/status/1929274268346712543
“He knows what he wants and the way he wants the game played and Carlton don’t play that game,” a former colleague of Wright said this week.
Carlton’s messy and lopsided salary cap won’t be something Wright will be happy about.
The Blues have fallen into the trap of paying big money for their “stars” such as Charlie Curnow, Harry McKay, Sam Walsh, Patrick Cripps, Jacob Weitering and Adam Cerra which hasn’t left much in the bank for anyone else. It’s no surprise the depth of their list is poor.
Wright will be particularly aghast with Zac Williams’ contract. He signed a monster six-year deal worth $900,000 per season when he arrived from GWS in October 2020.
Included in that deal were CPI increases in the salary cap which has gone up significantly since, meaning Williams will be on around $1 million this year and he still has one more year of the contract to run.
Premiership teams spread the salary cap load. Wright saw this at Hawthorn and then instigated it quickly at Collingwood.
“What Wrighty learnt from it was don’t get starry-eyed about your players, don’t get emotional,” a Hawks insider said. “If you want a player and he’s going to play a role for you, go and get him and don’t worry about the cost because you are getting him for the right reasons.
“Equally don’t get a player who is going to blow your cap up or if a player has been a wonderful servant but you can do something else, or there is a compelling reason why you need to save money, you have to be clear eyed about it. He learnt that from Dunstall.”
The article below is from the same rag only 2 days later, and some choose to believe the Williams click bait because Ralphy used the word "meaning" to make it look as though the guess is ... meaningful
Quote:
CHARLIE CURNOW AND HARRY MCKAY (CARLTON)
Carlton has absolutely no plans to trade its best two players Charlie Curnow and Harry McKay, adamant it would not even listen to offers for its star duo.
Reports this week have suggested the Blues are open for business on trades for its megastars.
But Carlton views Curnow in particular as its unicorn – an irreplaceable star who will be part of its long-term future.
It would be preposterous to trade him any time let alone in a weak draft with few key tall prospects of his calibre.
McKay has also won two of the club’s four games this season off his own boot.
Carlton’s view this week is that it is an unwelcome distraction which has no validity within the club.
Michael Voss will likely be coaching for his future next year and he would be in fantasy land to voluntarily trade Curnow in the same month where he is likely to lose free agent Tom De Koning.
New CEO Graham Wright will have ideas on the list makeup but will be part of a list management team.
Carlton has not given up hope of retaining De Koning but Wright’s list management views will be different to the Pies salary cap dump because Collingwood had no choice except to jettison stars including Brodie Grundy and Adam Treloar.
Carlton can make prudent, careful decisions, having looked past Dan Houston specifically to save cap space for De Koning and 2026 free agent Sam Walsh.
While its cap is tight, it is not in need of a Collingwood-style fire sale.
https://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/where-the-afls-biggest-stars-sit-as-all-eyes-turn-to-bye-period-meetings-and-negotiations/news-story/dfad8b1ac1781603e19e494889454576Obviously the Editor has given the writer(s) a stern order to fix the bullshit without having to apologise which I'm sure was a response to a likely Carlton FC approach for starting unnecessary, baseless rumours. The HS doesnt need a Carlton boycott similar to what Ch 7 is experiencing from the Kane Cornes fallout with NM and Bulldogs.
Lets be clear, Collingwood were in huge trouble as they were about to go over the salary cap by a squillion, and not only be forced to sell players they couldn't pay under the Sc, but also be fined and lose draft picks. That is what you call seriously bad management. Collingwood didnt fire sale players because they were great managers, its because they were forced to. Carlton is NOT in that position. So please stop giving these writers your approval, even if it suits your agenda. Its just Fake news.
Our main problem this year is depth.
Austin, and Lloyd backed our best 23 to get the job done and thought the injury issues that hampered us was behind us.
Hence, we have planned to draft in kids before the compromised drafts (plural) for the new Tassie team.
Unfortunately we have endured this year a minimum of 5 missing due to injury in one game against Geelong (we won easily) but usually we have had over 8 out injured , peaking at 13 recently, which is worse than last year.
What we have seen is we can't cover our injuries because we lack the depth. Hence our skills and stamina to run out games have been missing. Put game plan aside, and lets just stick to the quality of our "depth' players ... Evans (24), White (21), Motlop (22), Carroll (20), Campo.L (19), Binns (20), Moir (20), Pittonet (on one leg), Young (we wanted out) ... Is that the profile required of a Premiership List? No way. Some of our best 23 players should be our depth: Docherty, Gov, Fantasia, Haynes, Young
We have 4 kids on offer come seasons end: 3 NGA's(we have finally got with the program with players from this source ... think Jamarra, Quaynor...free hits) and a FS, Harry Dean.
To get these kids onboard, if they are good enough and we know Ison and Dean are, we need to make spots for them.
What do we do? We know we need more depth, and we know we need probably at least 5 experienced players to cover (Marchbank, Martin, Cuningham, Kennedy and Owies) we failed to do last year (thank god we landed Haynes for no picks and min salary).
How do we get the depth in with no first round pick, unless TDK leaves, giving us a full set of picks for 2025 and 2026 (we will need our first or obtain a pile of 2nds for Cody Walker in 2026).
So we need lets say 5 experienced players to give us depth, plus 3 kids (NGA/FS). We need 7 picks to trade.
Hang on. We need to make 7 spots available to fit them in. We know 2 LTI replacements will have to go, White and Flynn Young (or Evans instead) to give us our max 44 players on the list.
Lets say Lemmey, Monohan (NGA) and Wilson make way for the 3 new kids, Ison, Dean, Clark.
How do we create spots to bring in quality depth? We have to delist or Trade.
Logically, we would let go our "out of contract" and "oldest" players: Docherty, McGovern, Fantasia, Haynes and Newman to create spots. If we lose these 5, we are looking for 5 new players to cover their spots PLUS the 5 we are after to cover Marchbank, Martin.....etc
Where the hell are we going to find all thse picks?
Its not a SC problem we have. We need to create spots and find draft picks to improve our best 23 and our depth. Until you realise this your focus will be on a rumoured maxes out SC.
FA and DFA to give us some depth without picks, but we have no choice but to drop more kids, instead of dropping depth players.
Whose in the gun? Ive already mentioned Wilson and Lemmey for Ison and Dean, but also Charleson and Moir, and perhaps injury prone Kemp, Gov, Fantasia, and too expensive to pay out Williams $600K coz he's contracted.
Conundrum.
Make your choice. Looks like we really need for TDK to walk for a first round pick, which could get us Bergman, and make some hard choices. That's why we are even discussing Trading players. Its not SC issue. Our stars are contracted and if they don't want to go, they don't have to. Treloar, Grundy, Stevenson and Philips knew they had to leave or they would cause the Pies huge problems going over the SC.
No one of us know anything about our SC. There's no proof its at 95%, we have a war chest, or its as tight as the rumour mongers say.
Who goes to make room for 3 NGAs and 10 new experienced players?Who the targets are is another discussion.
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