Our injury list is almost the exact same as thsi time last year. 10-12 players including multiple season ending.

And it was probably a similar story in 2022-23.

Yep....and, for those who don't think we can blame injuries for our bad start this year, its worse this year in first 5 rounds than previous 2 years.

Round 6 vs Cats this year was our smallest list of injured players for the last 3 years with only 5 out injured compared to 12 same time last year, and interesting to note we had 12 out vs Cats last year in round 6. Last year same round vs Swans we had 10 out injured, this year 11.

Not only that, Curnow Harry and Walsh were not fit to start their 2025 H & A season.

Its just been Bad luck.

Williams and Fantasia are the constants from those years. One more year for Williams. Can't see Fantasia on our list next year.
Kemp has done his 2nd ACL. All the others is just bad luck.

All this changes after the Bye. Fingers crossed no injuries vs GWS this week, and we should have only Smith and Kemp out for year, and Newman, Cottrell and Fantasia on the cusp of a return in 1-2-3 rounds after bye.

WE can only afford 5 more losses if Finals is the goal.
We can only afford 3 more losses if Top 4 is the goal.

Who says the season is over?

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Everyone looks good in Navy Blue

Not just the injuries themselves, but it's hard to judge how much of a spanner it threw into the works to have H and EH rule themselves out with mh/personal issues on the eve of a new season. It spreads uncertainty because you can't easily plan around indefinite absences, and in addition to the Jagga injury it dampened the mood around the club considerably.

voss isn't a good coach ... i'm sure we can all agree.

was watching some damning footage of weitering from friday night. how many times have we watched a spud forward, or a defender moonlighting as a forward (as was the case friday night) completely take weitering out of the play. running him back to the square, giving him a tour of the weakside boundary line away from play.

why wouldn't coaching want weitering more involved? send haynes to the spud, and let weitering move higher up the ground to spoil and intercept where the ball is going.

same as BV's obsverations ... when you know cripps only runs one way, and he's being beaten soundly and can't get near it. head him off into the F50 for a breather to break the tag.

so many opportunities to move some magnets and potentially change a game's outcomes, and our coach and his staff are way beyond passive and heading into incompetence, imo ...

braithy, you know not everyone agrees on much, generally speaking, so I don't know how you can be sure everyone agrees with you. That's so Trumpesque, denying there is an opposite view worthy of consideration, and truth be known, nobody outside the 4 walls at the club really knows what discussions took place, so its hard for someone like me to jump onto your witch hunt. You've been judging Vossy whilst he's had his hands tied with injuries for the last 3 years .... including last week when half his team was missing. I've never liked the game "Stacks On". Things will change when we have players back from injury. I've got money on that.

Before I agree with you, in part, I want to add, how can any footy fan suggest the coaching group is incompetent? Says who, apart from you? I wouldn't say that. I wouldnt think that without knowing all the facts and the constraints he has in the coaches box. Secondly, who was tagging Cripps again? and, Was Cripps not able to get near it? Mate are you sure? 19 contested possessions, 2 goals, most score involvements for the team whilst he had his ankle strapped after rolling it late in the 2nd quarter, and we were in the lead at 3/4 time. He was good.

Look it was a tough game, played on a soft ground, against the odds, with half our team missing and we lost by less than 3 straight kicks. It wasn't a slaughter. Speaking of soft ground, I may have shared some intel on ground conditions: maybe we didnt do our homework on the soft ground, like Swans did, or, we were carrying players who couldn't last the 4 quarters of pressure and contest. That latter point is believable when you know we had 11 out injured, and lost our CHB, and they were replaced with kids and a couple of out of form players (too many of them to ignore their role in our loss).

We were leading at 3/4 time, despite umpire bias against us, and having half the team missing injured, and our CHB on the sidelines, robbing our tall 3rd tall to plug that spot up. Heeney just had his break out quarter (the 3rd) with 15 possessions. That's a domination, and if anyone in the coaches box thought Cripps was fully fit after strapping his ankle, made a big mistake. Easy to say with hindsight.

I don't know if the decision was for Cripps to make, or whether coaches underestimated his injured ankle, but I agree more attention should have been given to Heeney in the 3rd, but with so many kids, and lets remember Lord doesn't have the engine to play 4 quarters (60% is about where he's been all year),so he couldnt do more than what he's done giving it his all in the first half, and TBH, other than putting Walshy onto Heeney during the 3rd quarter to shrug off his tag, I don't know who we could have thrown into the middle onto Heeney. It was Walshy who was tagged by Jordan and Heeney-Cripps went head to head. Both scored 2 goals against each other. Personally, I don't like the idea of taking out our contested bull out of the middle for the last quarter, in a close game.

It did look like there was no levers pulled in the coaching box to quell Heeney's obvious dominance during the 3rd. I would never call it incompetence, but I would call it out as a mistake in hindsight. I think we did well for a game we should have one against the odds.

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Everyone looks good in Navy Blue

Not sure anybody has said we lost that final b/c of Doc selection.

What I've said then and since — and so have others — is that Docs underdone selection was emblematic of something quite off in the MC/Coaches box. This idea that an older player coming back from a second bout of cancer treatment with no games in VFL to speak of let alone form in the VFL was rushed into the final smacked of arrogance or delusion or something else that's a variation on ignorant wishful thinking. Based on no evidence other than a good vibe for a few weeks of on field track work and captain's runs somehow the brains trust at CFC decided that forcing Doc into the team was a stellar move. The evidence on the day suggests that whatever evidence they collected prior to that game, it was weak and they should have seen through the emotion of it.

Frequently we hear that Doc playing AFL footy "at the level" again (I guess if you're selected you can claim to be "at the level") means heaps to a whole lot of people more than Doc's immediate family and friends. He's a role model and inspiration to thousands of families dealing with the pain and uncertainty of a family member suffering a cancer and the extreme medical treatments administered to such patients. Great. Happy for Doc and happy for those who he inspires every single day he's playing footy. But how does making him look underdone AF in a Final and the whipping boy for Carlton fans and haters (and internal haters) inspire all those families and individuals dealing with serious cancer prognosis and treatment? I'd suggest it does nothing for those families beyond a week of pre-game sentimentality and even less than nothing for the Carlton FC and its fan base. We don't select players based on what it will do for their 'after-football' careers and opportunities, we shouldn't be selecting players based on the size or quality of their fan base either.

Is Doc the centre of CFC's on field and off field woes (or delight when we go well)? Absolutely not! But has his selection been completely mystifying for anybody who can tell the difference between AFL and MGM musicals from the 1930s-40s? My answer is a hard yes. I'm okay playing him against GWS with so many players unavailable, and tired youngsters in the VFL not ready for selection. but that's not been the case in the past 12 months. the narrative Voss and the club tried to spin about his return to play — to me at least — indicated that they thought his mere on-field presence and the narrative around it would magically give us a 6 goal advantage to half time. Well not quite, was it. The coaches and MC should leave the magical thinking to me and other fans, I can practice all the magic rituals and personal sacrifices you ask for, been doing it for fun since I was about 22 and learnt about the sacrificial arts. Speaking of which I flowered out during the second & third qtr of the '23 PF so blame me if anybody — not Doc or any single player, I still think we could the gone all the way in 2023, we weren't running out of legs, but we were running out of torsos to hang them off a bit though.

To the MC and coaches: please just be unapologetically rational and hard-arsed, but creative and bold* with it at the selection table ( * to pass one of my U13Bs cricket coach, Robert Vernon Wall's preferred adjectives/adverbs). Beggars can be choosers but also lets not forget the oppo wont bring the exact same tactics to the field that they used last time we played them or last time they played a game — even if our game-day tactics will remain relatively unchanged ("our one wood" we like to call it, contest and pressure, a method which stacks up in finals etc etc).

It's starting to make sense to me why project players like Motlop continue to be selected week in week out for the consistency of the forwards group inspire of their personal inconsistency of form and skill execution. Motlop generally tackles and does off ball stuff as well as any youngster is gonna do, and he plays with more composure, read over-confidence at times, than most of the batch of youngster carnies (other than Durdin who's been a revelation in '25). I'm relieved that the tactic of playing Motts one out in the goal square with a 6' defender sitting on top of him has been shelved for the last 10 or so games. wasn't a fan of that look. He's getting better consistently and I expect that Voss and MC showing faith in him has more than a little to do with that.

I'm pretty hopeful about many of our young picks and hope to see them as A-graders and walk up picks in the AFL team in 5 years. problem is, are we picking/trading enough of them onto the list? Until we start winning more VFL games than we lose I'm not so sure we are. We all know we have depth issues that need fixing fast. A talent glut at the VFL level of our list would be something to hold on to.

I'd happily trade TDK for a young promising ruck and more mids who can also play off wing, HB/HF if the Crippa/Walshy/Hewitt/Weiters/Harry/Curnow window closes in a few years. with or without #17.

we have quite a few players with a combination of endurance and speed (e.g. Cottrell, Hollands brothers) but what we need is this type of player with the run, carry and endurance who also have v good to elite disposal/goal kicking skills and that x-factor in terms of tactical foresight, as Diesel Williams said, not the first or second, but find the third or fourth option — the modern day AFL money player has no obvious weakness across these all traits, and therefore cannot be neutralised or worse with oppo line meeting tactics.

the game needs a 4 qtr contribution from the full 22 like it never has before and depth and flexibility of players in positions and tactics has never been less important than today to counter opposition momentum and the "challenges and weapons they throw at us", so we can't be carrying Rolls Royce players with just a 2 L ford flat four under the hood. Cripps can turn a game, so can TDK but you measure their value across a season not just on a few feel good moments. Crippa is worth his pay check and I.m sure he'd get a pay rise if he ever contemplated looking elsewhere. TDK is worth the 1.1 he's being offered, not $1.7 m unless you have a crustal ball telling you he continues to improve for next 5 years as much as he has over the last 3 years. wouldn't surprise me if SOS and Ross are playing poker with Voss just for the fun of it. trying to see if they can make Carlton double down on it's top tier player saleary issues for the salary cap. Let 'em. They can continue to recycle our delisted players and dream the dream. Flowers to SOS and Ross, I'd much rather have Voss.

Enjoyed reading your post. You covered some really poignant issues I often think about. re ongoing selction of project players/ role players; depth issue; run and carry vs speed; Ross and SOS playing poker.

Back to your response to my post. There's 2 different takes on the selections in the Final. You allude to both.

Firstly I completely agree with your point re selection integrity. There's no disputing that point. I couldn't believe Doc was selected, but understood we needed a miracle to get us over the line with our injuries.

Your assumption that no one here on TC (let alone other sites) blamed Voss's selections is not correct. All you need to do is refer to the post match thread, and other threads immeditately after the game, let alone other sites.

What started as Voss hating vitriol morphed into absolutes and blame for the loss became Vossy's fault. Not injuries, not off field issues, but all on Vossy. You may not have done that, I certainly didn't, but over time, ane a week after the Final, some onlookers started to really believe the hysteria that grew over the week that the coach cost us the Final. Chinese whispers? Nah, worse than that: taking in absolutes.

That Moir would kick 1 goal a quarter because that's what he did as a sub, because Binns was the accumulater and would get the lines, and Lord had shown he's a ready made mid with ample pace, using the WCE win to claim "we won with those 3 playing". That's what it turned into. Its called hysteria, and it happened here, and hysteria still happens here. I'm not letting that one go to the keeper because the blame game on Voss continues since that Final, and its relevant to bring up the hysteria of the past to draw a comparison with the hysteria of the present, with half our team out injured.

I don't think we can blame anyone without knowing all the facts, last year or last week.

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Everyone looks good in Navy Blue

.

I have not been overly critical of Voss because he has managed to take clubs to the finals and I think the list management team has sold him a lemon in recent years.

However it is incumbent on the coaching staff to maximise the talent they have at their disposal.
The Matt Kennedy situation is getting under my skin - the story was there was no room for him in our midfield however he goes to a club with arguably a better midfield and he is thriving to the point where he is having a career standout year.

Now if Voss and the coaches could not extract the best out of Kennedy and recognise his value to a team like Bevo has who else in the playing group is in the same boat.

Kennedy this year is arguably having a better season than anyone in Carltons midfield which he could not find a place for.
Last might having 25 disposals - 3 goals and 12 score involvements all this with 78% game time

You start to question the coaching

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If you allow the Government to change the Laws in an emergency
They will create an Emergency to change the Laws

I don't lose too much sleep over how Kennedy is doing this year. The way WB plays makes his sort - good at finding contested ball, overhead marking and attacking the goals, and not worrying too much about defensive accountability or two-way running - look very good indeed. But as exciting and impressive as WB were last night, they conceded 20 goals; they scored 113 points and lost. If we rebound tomorrow against GWS we'll be a game behind them, even though we've been way off it and they've been hyped to the rafters as some kind of superpower. Yeah, their footy is way better on the eye, but we keep being told defence wins premierships, and that's the approach we've taken, so we keep the likes of Hewett and Cerra to bring the defensive balance to the more attacking Cripps and Walsh.

I guess we'll see... maybe WB will score heavily enough to go deep in September and we'll look silly for not using their gameplan with MK at the heart of it. But I don't think they've unlocked any abilities we didn't know about nor fixed any deficiencies. Good luck to him in any case.

Excellently put. I'm big enough to admit that the EF debacle has soured me on Doc for the long term, and it's a terrible thing to admit because he should be a bloody hero to me. And I'm sure he still is to many but... yeah, you said it... it actually had the opposite effect of being inspirational, it almost cheapens his story and maybe even has a detrimental effect beyond football. I don't know, just speculating here, but it might explain why something has changed inside me vis-a-vis Sam Docherty.

Treloar Jones Darcy Weightman and Ugle

Fair bit of talent missing there
We lose JSOS and struggle to cover him

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If you allow the Government to change the Laws in an emergency
They will create an Emergency to change the Laws

Yes, they're missing more of their best 10, but we're missing way more of our best 23. As Bondi said, the one game we weren't missing tons of depth, we thoroughly bested the team that beat WB.

Jones is playing VFL.

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"They're [REDACTED]'

I feel the same.

Not that it was possible, but Bob Murphy being rushed back into the 2016 grand final and them losing would have changed the way the football world sees him.

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“When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn't become a king. The palace turns into a circus.”
Turkish Proverb

Doc wasn't the reason we lost that final.
We had lost 6 of 8 leading into that game with wins over WC and North.
When Bob Murphy was left out of the Grand final the dogs had won 6 of their last 7 leading up to it.

Should Doc have played, probably not
Would the result been different, definitely not.

As a football player I have never been on the Doc bandwagon I always thought he was a turnover king.

As a person who has had the life struggles he has has you have to admire his commitment

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If you allow the Government to change the Laws in an emergency
They will create an Emergency to change the Laws

I get the frustration on Kennedy but to be honest we have no place for another slow mid in the team, we all know that.
And IIRC, he wanted to play more of an inside mid role as per his end of year meeting with Voss.
He was told no (rightly so given Cerra, Walsh, Cripps and Hewett are all better than him), so he decided to be moved to the Dogs where he is attending 64% of CBA's vs the 33% he was attending in 2024 for us.

You can't blame coaching for that, it's what the player wanted.

Then you add in the fact that the Dogs have a quicker team than we do, having a slower contested player (who still gets caught a lot too) is not such an issue as it is for us.
Plus they lost McRae who is pretty much like for like as a player, although I would say better IMO.
Either way he had a specific role to fill, one we didn't have for him.

Don't get me wrong, I'd have loved to keep Kennedy as he was a favourite player of mine, but we are too slow already and if Jagga was not injured you'd have not even thought about him for a minute.

If you want to have an issue with the club regarding Kennedy going, I'd say it would be putting all our eggs in one basket when we had 2 picks in the top 20 last year.
I would've preferred to have spread the risk, but until we see Jagga in full flight ,all we can bemoan is trading this years first away and the Hawks getting a possible top 10 pick.
But even then, if Jagga turns out to be the player he is predicted to be those two picks will be inconsequential.

I disagree, I don't think he's the best in the league but to say he isn't a good coach is a bit of a reach.

Chris Scott has been praised as being a good coach who I and a lot of other people think is pretty ordinary and Voss has bested him several times now.

The biggest issue I have with this constant need to sack the coach all the time, is that we have been doing this for the whole of this century and we have been crap.
How long did Geelong stick with Scott before he won a premiership (not including his first on the back of Mark Thompson and their dip in the supplements section)?
Answer, it was 11 years.
It is a shining example of stability at the top, a defined game plan, astute trading/drafting and luck with injuries.
(let's not mention cheap farms).

We finally have a stable coaching group like them or not, we have a very defined game plan, we are just missing a handful of the players to execute it and we need to keep trimming the annually injured.

Our list is our problem, coaching can only do so much with a shallow list and high injuries.
We are desperate for speed and skill, if we get more of that then we can rely less on stoppage to stoppage contested football.
This alone will reduce injuries and game fadeouts, especially if we can fix the F50 entries to capitalise on all the grunt work we can do.
If Lord keeps going as good as he is and then we add Jagga, our midfield will be versatile and damaging and most importantly not relying on the few to do all the work.

There's much more to this story than your simple view.

Kennedy is gone. Yes he would have been great to have to fill spots made due to injury and as depth.

We got a 2nd rounder for him. Win Win. WE wouldn't have Harry O'Farrell without that pick.

Move on. He's gone, and how you blame that on Voss, is beyond me. The Voss bashing is gaining momentum. Hysteria does that.

The road is ahead, not behind us. I was happy to get a 2nd rounder and turning over the list. We will do the same again till our skill levels are where they need to be.

Kennedy leaving has not closed our window, and I wonder who would be pushed out of Dogs midfield when Treloar is back, if Weightman was coming back too. Add Darcy to that forward line. he will bump out a marking forward.

I reckon Kennedy got lucky he landed in a team that is quick and injuries opened up a spot for him, like they did at Carlton. Lets see how long Kennedy's honeymoon period lasts.

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Everyone looks good in Navy Blue