Nah...if you can't take the piss out of Carlton, who can you take the piss out of?

I dont give a @#$%&! what happens off field. They can spin round and round twirling ribbons and sucking candy canes for all I care. What i do care about is the performance on the field.
Now the two guys that are going to affect this performance are Bolton (and assistants) and SOS.
SOS to me is an unknown. There is a giant leap of faith that the majority seemed to have made about him, and I am certainly along for the ride until evidence proves otherwise. One thing you can say for certain, is that his approach has been very different to that which has failed us in the past. So I am wondering why he is not being viewed by Mr Happy and Co in a more positive light.
Secondly Bolton. Now for years we have had the moaning about the lack of innovation with our coaches, and the lack of due diligence in their appointment. Now we seem to have performed a thorough search, and appointed a well qualified, articulate coach, from a top performing club. What reason is there to be so negative about his appointment?

I dont see what more the club could have done to make these appointments better- at least on paper. of course it remains to be seen what happens on the field. So where does this leave us? Trigg , McKay and MLG. These three plus the board have appointed to the pointy end, seemingly competent and professional people. What more could they have done? Why the negativity?

Padre, just out of interest...who do you think has to take responsibility for the clubs current financial position?

Off field and on field go hand in hand.
One won't work if the other is not working.

It might take 10 years, maybe 20 - but can I request someone takes a photo of your face when you don't have a club anymore? I do enjoy schadenfreude.

The players are paid handsomely every week.
They have an aspiring coach from a great culture.
They have added some good talent and will add elite talent in the draft next week.
Hopefully our injuries will not be as dramatic as in the past.
I can see us moving forward and winning more games in 2016 regardless of what is happening off field.

IMO it seems a lot of things are improving off field, and the changes will continue to roll out over the next couple of years.
It feels to me the club has acknowledged and is addressing our failures from the past.

I read with interest the perceived failures off field, all directly related to 'factions' which seem to be of a political nature.

The potential to turn Carlton into a power house again is probable imo. Perhaps everyone wants the reigns of this club because of this probability.

I try to think of reasons why these factions, who love Carlton would be so destructive as some suggest. Perhaps the powerbrokers want to be heroes.

I'm sure Carlton will be enjoyable to watch again in the very near future and our fortunes will change with that.

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Everyone looks good in Navy Blue

having worked on a lot of major projects. those doing the work really know if things a working or not. so if there are people who are well connected with people within the club and they are saying there is only window dressing fixes and root cause problems remain then i am inclined to believe them

i have a very small insight into how the board is performing and generally it is underwhelming. that said if they stay out of the way i am inclined to think we now have some reasonable people in place at the club and improvement will come

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'‘He had an enormous capacity to pump himself up and get the best out of himself when it mattered. He had a fire in his belly – a passion for the contest like few other players’' -- D Parkin in reference to the dominator

Oh they don't set out to be destructive Bondi. They are passionate and they want the club to succeed. But they know what they know. For instance, Marcus Clarke knows the law and Zac Fried knows the retail sector. Both had very strong father figures who taught them about making their way in the world - but nothing about the running of an AFL football club.

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If you remember in December 2006, Mark Harrison and Stephen Moulton were invited onto the board. These two went straight onto the front foot and identified paying back the league's $1.5 million financial assistance package as a priority.

"They (the AFL) have thrown the club a loan and because of that they've assumed too much control and the interfering in the club's day-to-day operation must end," Harrison said.

That was February 2007. Almost 9 years ago and the club is still feeding its fans the same line about the AFL assuming too much control.

They aren't off the cuff remarks. They're very intentional. With Ruffy Geminder and Ahmed Fahour stepping down at the AGM and thus lowering the number of board members to 8, members will vote on a LoGiudice proposal to change the constitution and make 8 the maximum number of board members.

I'm not against that move per se, but it has to be seen for what it is. It firmly puts one of the two factions in control. Again - I understand the politics and I'm not against the move. You have to play the game and the game is a game of chess.

My problem all along has been that I want Gary Kasparov and Bobby Fischer playing the game. And that's not what we have at Carlton. It's essentially Cliff Claven from Cheers vs Frank Burns from M*A*S*H. The analogy works because they think they're smart when quite clearly, they have shown over a long period of time that they are not. That's the key to buffoonery. And buffoonery is what we have at Carlton. M*A*S*H and Cheers both ran for 11 years. I often wonder how many years the Carlton sitcom will run before ratings plummet and people realise it has jumped the shark.

You certainly have a way with words and analogies.

The offfield problems are. Financial. Much of that is historic, but further extenuated by our current membership "problem"
The historical debt related to princess park etc was a combination or arrogance ( elliott) conniving ( AFL) and stupidity ( collins) . But that debt is our legacy. And a one off.
What is more concerning is the current operational debt. I suspect that this is mainly due to membership numbers, although i seem to remember seeing that our expenditure is way up there with the leagues highest.
If that is the case then that truly is a case to answer for. And that is for the current board to answer.
But that is only half the equation. The other half is the factors out of our control. The AFL have foistered on the competition unsustainable costs. They have allowed player payments to explode. They have in doing so, guaranteed that clubs spend a lot more money in facilities and support staff, in order to protect their COMPULSORY investment in players. The clubs and the AFL both know that without onfield success , membership numbers fall and it is impossible to balance budgets. This of course only applies to victorian teams. SA and WA teams have a natural advantage with membership monopolies and particularly parochial football fans. Then we have the expansion teams that have been gifted protection financially and in the form of players.
I liken the AFL with its broadcasting rights largesse to the current australian economy .and its now fading mining boom. The massive influx of money into both systems has created winners and losers. The australian economy has become fat bloated and entitled, all on the back of unearned wealth from a once in a lifetime explosion of money into our economy. Our politicians have. Let costs in the form of wages and property prices get way out of kilter with what our real economy can sustain and so now we are left floundering after the mining boom spigot has been turned off. We are now simply a high cost economy. One of the highest in the world. Such a huge change from 20 years ago.
Like the australian economy the Afl have had a huge injection of money via broadcasting rights. Wages and costs have blown out, and the "real" AFL. Economy cannot sustainably support itself. The traditional or real afl economy is the club membership revenue stream. It is no longer big enough to sustain the costs imposed on it by the AFL. This leaves all the power in the hands of those that control the new and far more significant revenue stream from the broadcasting rights.. The AFL.
So whilst i acknowledge that our board could clearly be doing better, I wonder whether it is currently within the power of any victorian club that is not experiencing sustained onfield success, to be able to trade solvently without afl handout.
So i get back to my original point, that we need onfield success to turn us around financially. That is THE most important factor in stopping the financial bleeding. Our costs are largely fixed by the afl but it is our revenue that is not expanding enough to keep up with the structural inflation of our costs that is the root cause. But how does a club expand its membership during a period where it has been under-performing on field but it has been hamstrung in its rebuilding efforts by the expansion team's christmas tree recruiting

EFA

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If I want your opinion, I'll give it to you!

Appreciate the detailed response. The answer to the above is innovation and our board doesn't have a clue about innovation. LoGiudice has been gifted some ideas, shelved most and bastardized the others. It's really not that hard, but they're essentially out of touch and out of money.

Carlton members are so caught up in the benefactor complex that if people without money but great ideas decided to run for the board they a) wouldn't get past the independent nominations committee or b) wouldn't stand a chance. The Carltonians have their pseudo-President and according to them, all is fine. And if it ain't broke - why fix it? Thing is...it IS broke!

The AFL will virtually control Carlton within 3 years anyway, so all will be ok.

It sound like you have some skin in the game? Didnt you say somewhere that you sat down for an hour with them and you were underwhelmed. It seems to me you had some ideas that were not taken seriously. Care to share?

Without going into too much detail I'd say 50/50. There's things they agreed with - other things that just aren't going to happen, and to my mind that's to the detriment of the club. There was perhaps a sense of frustration on my part that was perceived as an accusation of doing things half-arsed, wherein it was frustration that they were doing things the wrong way. Obviously Mark doesn't/didn't see it that way.

They're still trying to open a can of tomato soup with a fork. You can still get the soup out, but it's a lot more difficult. My frustration is that they don't want the can-opener...they're happy using the fork. I really want them to use the can-opener, but they have to want the can-opener. You can't give it to them. They won't use it.

they dont want your can opener, they want your money

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*(grow - fun - gah)

Yeah but whatabout your whataboutism.

I don't have much to spare, but they could have some of it if they started to use the can-opener.

but thats too much hard work

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*(grow - fun - gah)

Yeah but whatabout your whataboutism.

Ha, even that scum of a club, with all the costs and payouts its copped over the last year, hasn't suffered as big a loss as Carlton, and by a good margin too!

Now that would almost be funny if it wasnt such an incomprehensible indictment on this club's administrative mismanagement...

The debt was there from the elliot days
The operational loss was due to
Poor onfield performance -list (Ratten Hughes) Le Giudace post round 2 "everyone is tradeable" brainfade
I think we have learnt from our mistakes

Start winning games and all will be well. SIMPLE IS THAT!!!

How can anyone expect a team that's performed poorly and won 4 games to net a 2 million profit?

The club has made some substantial administration changes thus there being payments.

But the right people are now in place to take this club forward.

MLG is one.