This week, the Delorean arrived at Visy Park in the Year 2030. Yep – it’s still Visy Park, we’re still the Carlton Football Club and we still wear Navy Blue. While those things haven’t changed – plenty has. Some of you will want to know if we won a Premiership? Although we’ve not won one in a number of years, we have managed to add to the Trophy cabinet with Premierships 17, 18 and 19 (a great win against the Magpies!). Much is expected of the current crop AND the future – which will hopefully include some sons of greats from a bygone era.
Unfortunately the AFL is still a bit of an anti-Carlton establishment. In 2022 we made international headlines after the club employed a team of Swiss scientists to clone Peter Motley. Mots was 58 when he and the clubs lawyers agreed that he had been denied the opportunity of a successful sporting career through no fault of his own and expressed an interest in seeing what a cloned version of himself could achieve at the highest level. The cloning was successful, and Carlton really did its homework on this one, however the AFL closed the loophole on the Blues and the court proceedings began. The club took the AFL to the High Court after arguing that in 1987 Carlton did not receive any assistance from the then VFL after the Motley accident. Luckily for us we had formed an International partnership with the New York Yankees and their expert legal team got us over the line after setting a precedent with their own Thurman Munston, who tragically died in 1979 during the height of his career.
In addition to the ‘cloning’ of Mots – AFL clubs managed to successfully lobby the AFL recently for changes to the father/son rule. Carlton have planned for this better than most. We have had frozen embryos of some of our champions stored up for many years in a Canberra Fertility Centre. AFL laws permit only players who played 100 games and fathered only daughters to be a part of the program, so the good news is we currently have sons of Doull, Southby and Fevola amongst others in an athletic schooling environment in the AIS. Their progress is readily available on the internet and the kids look pretty promising. The athletic director is Craig Bradley, who is now 67 and looks like he could still get a game at the highest level.
Speaking of the internet, it’s changed too. Smart phones are still the go, however they’re no longer bulky items – they look more like what NFL Quarterbacks wear around their wrist to see what the next play is. So you can pretty much do anything on these things…little Korean company came up with the idea, so grab some shares if you can and you can retire before the age of 75 which is when most people are working to these days.
Speaking of Korea, we have a major international sponsor these days. It’s the City of New Songdo. New Songdo City wasn’t completed until 2015, but it’s an amazing place. The first real ‘Smart’ city in the world – our partnership with Visy held us in good stead with this one. When the creators (a company called Gale International) were designing it, they wanted a different sporting infrastructure to what was the ‘norm’ across Asia. The NY Yankees and Carlton pitched a revolutionary concept to them and while initially skeptic – it’s a great sponsorship for the Blues. We play 1 exhibition game and 1 regular season game there a year and it’s been so successful we’ve just embarked on a three-game summer series in New Songdo whereby Carlton plays an AFL all-star team…the boys get paid heaps to come and play in it and they love the experience and the city. The AFL have a devoted pay-per-view internet station here beeming AFL News and live footy back to Korea 24/7…so ElevenHD (the Ten and OneHD footy spin-off that has the TV, internet and satellite radio rights) are laughing all the way to the bank. http://www.songdo.com
So what happened to the crop of current players? Well – you can go find out for yourself at the BLUEseum which is right next door to the 20 year old ‘Sir Richard Pratt Centre’…just a wonderful transformation to the interior of the Gardiner Stand which previous administrations wanted nothing to do with. In fact the club is a great place to go to day or night. These days a giant screen drops down from the Legends Stand and crowds flock to ‘Pictures@PrincesPark’ nights. As Carlton Members, we are also privy to special nights such as the screening of Grand Finals from yesteryear and the live games from Korea. Of course, our regular season home games are all at the MCG these days and the Carlton Reserves play home games at Visy Park.
Alright…I’m off to test drive one of these new ‘hoverboards’ on the Oval next door…wish me luck
