Voss Coached The Way He Played And His Brutal Football Failed Carlton

From the Pocket: Voss coached the way he played and his brutal football failed Carlton

The Blues boss clung to an antiquated way of playing that the competition had long moved past, and that slowly ground his players to dust

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When John Elliott died in 2021, the old, dark, imperial Carlton was dead. The new Carlton was grounded on “respect, humility and integrity”. The new president was a master networker. The new chief executive was the best administrator in football. The new coach had been one of the great players of his generation.

The Blues were a terrific team to watch in Michael Voss’s first year as coach. He had a lot to work with in 2022 – a pair of No 1 draft picks, two Coleman medallists, a captain who would win two Brownlow medals and a list that had been built from the spine since Brendon Bolton’s first year in charge. They spent almost the entire season in the top eight, and most of it on the cusp of a double chance.

They needed just one win in August to play finals for the first time in nine years. But they lost their last four games – one an unforgivable loss to Adelaide, and two heart-wrenching defeats to Melbourne and Collingwood. It took Carlton until mid-June 2023 to gather themselves. Against Gold Coast in round 23, the second quarter was like a giant exhale, and the catalyst for one of the more exhilarating rides a football club has ever been on. Of their nine goals for the game, eight came from centre clearances, and most of those started with Patrick Cripps. The players got a standing ovation at half-time.

They rode the winter wave to the first week of September. It was exactly a decade since they’d last won a final. That 2013 win against Richmond sticks in my marrow perhaps more than any football game I’ve ever seen. This was a completely different kind of elimination final, played in squalid conditions, against a Sydney side that had fallen into the eight. The Blues did their best to stuff it up, but hung on to win by a goal.

The following week was the apex of the Voss era. The semi-final was a torrid affair, and Carlton caught a lot of breaks. Melbourne frittered away so many chances. Having dislocated his shoulder earlier in the night, Sam Docherty set up the winning goal. With apologies to Taylor Swift fans, I’ve never felt the MCG shake the way it did at that precise moment.

For about 20 minutes during the following week, the prospect of a Collingwood-Carlton grand final, and everything that entails for our society, was very much in play. The atmosphere resembled an early 1980s fixture at Princes Park. But against Brisbane in the preliminary final the red cordial ran out and Keidean Coleman’s gimlet eye, pencil moustache, cobalt blue boots and lethal left foot were too much for the visitors.

In July 2024, the Blues were second on the ladder and six points clear of third. Cripps was bludgeoning his way to a record 45 Brownlow votes. They were 39 points up against GWS Giants and then conceded 14 of the next 16 goals. They won just two more games, against the two worst teams, for the year. They were running an infirmary at games. Brisbane annihilated them in the elimination final.

By 2025, all they needed was some luck with injuries and some clean air, right? But in the space of a few months, there was a bewildering and humiliating dick pic scandal involving president Luke Sayers, an ACL injury to No 3 pick Jagga Smith and a still scarcely believable round one loss to Richmond. Voss remained wedded to a “contest and clearance” game that was increasingly obsolete. Brisbane were kicking the ball in pentagons and parallelograms – one short, one backwards, one medium, one sideways, one diagonal – all invariably inch perfect. Geelong had turned the football field into an athletics carnival. Hawthorn stacked their team with exquisite ball users on the wings and flanks. Speed, skill and smarts were what won finals now – not brute force.

Voss tinkered with change, but never seemed fully committed to it. He coached Carlton the way he captained Brisbane – a blunt instrument, a ferocious competitor and an unflagging believer in brutal, attritional football. He was saying to the rest of the competition, “this is what we are – good luck beating us.” And the opposition exploited that. They’d wait, like Muhammad Ali in Zaire, for Carlton to punch themselves out. They’d adjust their magnets, and change their modes and method. And as Norman Mailer wrote of George Foreman in that fight, the Blues in second halves were like “a somnambulist, in a dance marathon” – a confused and exhausted team.

Carlton have been criticised for the way they handled this. “We don’t march coaches to the gallows on the back of four weeks,” Gerard Whateley said after their poor start to this season. But it wasn’t just four weeks. It was several years of evidence. It was several years of the same problems, of an antiquated way of playing that the competition had long moved past, and that slowly ground his players to dust. “I’ve never been a plan B kind of guy,” Voss told Damian Barrett on Tuesday. “I’ve been plan A – all in, or plan B – all out.” He was talking about his future plans. But it was a neat summary of what made him such a magnificent player and leader, and why he ultimately failed as a coach.