frank dardew wrote:
Great article by Philip Coorey in the AFR today summing up how a lot of us are feeling about Carlton at the moment
Can’t post it because of firewall but have a look at it
It describes exactly where the fan base is and why it is where it is re the teams performance
Someone please provide link it is worth the read
Best I can do Frank. Cut and paste .... It's protected by a Paywall
A Carlton fan’s lament In politics, the mob usually gets it right when it comes to elections. In footy, the fans are no less intuitive, especially the passionate ones.
By Phillip Coorey Political editorProfessional sport and politics are very similar. Both are, in essence, a competition where winning is everything and all else is a distant second. Not that you can win every time, nor please all the people all the time, be they voters or fans. Success in politics requires a leader to be of the people but not like them. To a certain degree, sport is no different. Clubs and their hierarchies need to be in sync with their fans. But it is here that a worrying disconnect has developed between the Carlton Football Club and its 80,000 members and thousands more followers.
In politics, the mob usually gets it right when it comes to elections. In footy, the fans are no less intuitive, especially the passionate ones.
In football, as in politics, winning is everything What incenses them is being told otherwise by their club’s public relations unit, which writes and publishes match reports which cherry-pick the highlights, gloss over the failings and ultimately bear little resemblance to what they just witnessed with their own eyes. When fans are angry and hurting, they want to know their club is feeling the same way, not see their coach regurgitating talking points at a news conference and endlessly dwelling on the positives. They don’t expect perfection and, of course, optimism is important, but so is candour. And passion.
Studying the club’s Facebook page, it is clear the overwhelming majority of Carlton fans feel this way. The disappointment was evident immediately after yet another “gallant defeat” at the hands of Richmond in round one this season. It wasn’t so much that Carlton has started losing again, but that there has been no discernible step change since last year. Anyone who watched the preseason match against St Kilda, another gallant defeat, could see that. There is next to no tolerance among the fan base for anything but success. The anger is visceral. Carlton has been in strife for the best part of two decades. It was getting back on its feet under coach Brett Ratten, making the finals from 2009 until 2011, until he was abrasive and polarising manner didn’t work at Carlton. Even from the outside we could all see that.
The club made the finals in 2013 but only after Essendon* was disqualified over the supplements scandal. Platitudes and gobbledegook Around this time the now-dreaded term “rebuild” began to rear its head and in 2015, Malthouse was given his marching orders by Kernahan’s successor, Mark LoGiudice. In came the hapless Brendon Bolton, a lovely fellow with a good football brain, but one of the new breed of theorists. Bolton spoke in platitudes and gobbledegook. Green shoots became his hallmark. He spent one summer in Boston doing a leadership course and after that, became unintelligible. After one particular flogging, he told the news conference the players had “owned their careers tonight”.
To this day, I still have no idea what that meant.
The Carlton hierarchy was so invested in Bolton it refused to acknowledge what soon became apparent to the fans. This bloke wasn’t going to work either. But many stayed patient and most remained loyal. It was, after all, a rebuild, and success was around the corner. Others were less forgiving but to the detriment of the club, it persisted with Bolton until his tenure was completely untenable. Who can forget that savaging at the hands of GWS when they outscored us in the final quarter despite having only 16 fit players?
It was not until 2019 and four wasted years that Bolton was let go, with just 16 wins from 77 games to his name, including three from the most recent 33 matches. Then came David Teague, a former player of solid standing, with a good football brain and who refreshingly spoke in plain English and coached an old style of players backing themselves and going up the guts. Thankfully, the club finally acknowledged the rebuild wasn’t going so well and changed tack. After seven years of telling us one thing, it decided to fast-track the rebuild by buying a few players to blend experience with youth. After securing Adam Saad and Zac Williams, this was supposed to be the year.
There would be no more excuses, no more green shoots, no more rebuilding, no more gallant bloody losses or brave Blues. It was time to make the finals, legitimately, for the first time in a decade during which we have churned through two presidents, three CEOs, four coaches, a membership boom, an eradicated debt but, most importantly, scant progress on the field.
But six rounds into season 2021 and it’s a feeling of, here we are again. Despite poaching the best fitness guru, we started the season with a third of the team’s first 18 on the injury list, and were told to accept this as normal. Players lured by enormous salaries to kick goals couldn’t hit a barn wall. Other teams which slumped long after us have rebuilt long before us. Brisbane is Exhibit A.
Our coach has lost his mojo and speaks in spin, repeating the same phrases after each loss as if he is a hostage being made to read a statement. Not feared or disliked, just pitied Teague had nothing like the goodwill or patience extended to his predecessors who got away for years with saying winning wasn’t important. He had a very short runway on which to operate. It may be unfair to demand his scalp but many are. Not so long ago, it was a young Patrick Cripps being exhorted to “step up” and help its first in 1966, or the Bulldogs, who had to wait half a century between drinks, But now, that’s how it feels. We are neither feared nor disliked. Just pitied.
Carlton legend Mark McClure spoke recently of two decades of being served up rubbish. We have had more wooden spoons – five – than any other club this century, but more significant is the cultural dislocation. A once-feared juggernaut, Carlton’s culture has become one of aspiring to mediocrity.
We don’t know how to win, just garner a heroic headline. As Bob Hawke once said of Kim Beazley, who he didn’t think was tough enough to beat John Howard: “He hasn’t got enough shit in him”.
That’s what years of repeated heavy defeats and a patronising football media instils in a club, all helped by a generation that has no living memory of the Carlton of old.
Of the 43 senior players on the current list, just under a third was born when Carlton last won a flag in 1995.
Marc Murphy and Eddie Betts were eight, Levi Casboult and Ed Curnow were about five and due to start school. Liam Jones was a year behind, aged four.
The rest – Sam Docherty, Cripps, Michael Gibbons, Adam Saad, Jack Martin, Jack Newnes, Nic Newman, Lachie Plowman and Mitch McGovern – were aged two or less and still in nappies.
Our corporate memory, built over more than 150 years, has vanished.
Ultimately, sport is like politics in that there are no problems that winning won’t fix.
But an awful realisation has dawned that all the talk, promises and planning of years past has amounted to nothing and we have to drop senior players, look for another coach and start again. We will be rebuilding longer than Beirut.
The mood was articulated on Facebook by a fan who lamented that all this club gave him was “spin and misery”.
Another, named Ross Cattle, wrote after the loss to Brisbane:
“I spend six days in agony and tell myself don’t watch Carlton, game day comes and I can’t control myself, I have to watch and I actually stupidly convince myself this game will be our turning point, only to be devastated (by) another loss, and a grand final appearance so far away.
“Maybe it is something I never might see in my life, when we do win it’s meaningless in terms of finals and what we all dream of a grand final, being a Carlton supporter feels like you’re a loser but 15 minutes before quarter time you actually believe something different.
“Is there a worse team than Carlton?”
The answer to that last proposition is “yes”. And plenty.
Because as much as this club breaks our hearts, we love it and that’s why we get so angry at times and lash out.
We’ll always love the club, even if it kills us.
Because its more important than politics.
It’s footy.
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