Opinion Mick Malthouse

What is the next move on Mick?

  • Sack him immediately; replacement coach to see out the year.

    Votes: 192 48.9%

  • Let him coach out the year then show him the door.

    Votes: 70 17.8%

  • Sign him now to give coaches and players some direction.

    Votes: 81 20.6%

  • Not sure yet... still too angry to think clearly.

    Votes: 50 12.7%
  • Total voters
    393
  • Poll closed .

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SurreyBlue said:
Mick can't afford for the team to not improve this year. I don't think the club will be as lenient as last year.
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Think the club's board and most sensible fans acknowledge we are likely due in for another tough year, and another bottom 6 finish is a distinct possibility, due to the transitional state of our list.

We have yet to have a proper suck of the draft well, like Brisbane and The Doggies (2 teams I believe will be big improvers this year)

My only query on Mick this year is if he can remain focused on the job, if Nanette's (fingers crossed she doesn't) health worsen.


Say all you want about Mick, he is a devoted and loving husband, father and grandfather, family is very important to him.

It would be a bad move for PR and memberships for the club to say we're having a rebuild year in 2015, but I suspect that's what the club's admin privately believes, it certainly won't be finals or bust for MM to get a new contract, put it that way ..
 
SurreyBlue said:
Nothing to do with what we are discussing and pretty poor form to bring up his family issues in this conversation.
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Hardly, I think Mick's family issues are relevant to this discussion, considering Mick (rightfully) missed the NAB Challenge game to be at his wife's bedside during her medical procedure on Friday.

It should also be mentioned that Mick's been such an ornament to the game, I want him to leave Carlton and the game coaching on his terms, when he says he has lost the passion for the game.

Over 10 years ago, English soccer club Newcastle United sacked a manager who was held in similar high regard over there as Mick in their country (Sir Bobby Robson) and it was a massive PR and morale disaster for that club (they got relegated a year later)

Mick deserves to leave his final coaching job with his dignity, and frankly I think it would be a pretty short sighted decision to replace him after this season, even if we finish bottom 4.

Sacking coaches ever 2-3 years has never helped St Kilda or Footscray (for example)
 

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DaVillaBlues said:
We have yet to have a proper suck of the draft well, like Brisbane and The Doggies (2 teams I believe will be big improvers this year)
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Brisbane wil rise - theyve brought in class this season to complement the youth theyve brought in over previous seasons. Dogs will likely go the other way losing 3 of their top 5 mids from last season (Cooney, Griff, Libba) and also losing Higgins - but theyll be better for it in the long run.
 
SBYM said:
I never said we didn't go backwards...

We are still a laughing stock.

tl;dr...let's give MM some time. If we were stagnating then I wouldn't be saying this. We ain't stagnating but... Positive change is afoot...it just takes time in this caper.
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Don't quite follow you SBYM. You imply we have gone backwards under MM and are a laughing stock. Then you say give MM (more) time because we aren't stagnating and positive change is afoot. I am starting to see why we are a laughing stock however.:(
 
The Smoking Gun said:
For those expecting Cripps and Menzel to step it up to be A-Graders this year will just have to hold their horses. You need to remember that it took Murphy 3-4 years to become week-in-week-out A-Grade material and Gibbs took twice as long.
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Murphy was a star in his first season and until injured the Rising Star favourite. He was regularly tagged as our most dangerous midfielder. I think Cripps should be a very solid contributor for us this year and I am hoping Menzel has the tank to now play top quality football all day instead of for 15 minutes.

The Smoking Gun said:
Mick's on the right track with developing a list to be more than competitive against all the other teams, but I would think that he'd need at least another 3 years before we're not only making top 8, but not just making up the numbers. The point of this post is demonstrate how far behind the Swans, Geelong, Hawthorn, Collingwood and Port that Carlton has been in its ability to process new ways of development and in its day-to-day operations.
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Port? When MM came to Carlton Port was a complete basket case. 2 years later you are lauding Port but claiming we need 5 years under MM in order to reach Port's level. Go figure.
 
DaVillaBlues said:
Hardly, I think Mick's family issues are relevant to this discussion, considering Mick (rightfully) missed the NAB Challenge game to be at his wife's bedside during her medical procedure on Friday.

It should also be mentioned that Mick's been such an ornament to the game, I want him to leave Carlton and the game coaching on his terms, when he says he has lost the passion for the game.

Over 10 years ago, English soccer club Newcastle United sacked a manager who was held in similar high regard over there as Mick in their country (Sir Bobby Robson) and it was a massive PR and morale disaster for that club (they got relegated a year later)

Mick deserves to leave his final coaching job with his dignity, and frankly I think it would be a pretty short sighted decision to replace him after this season, even if we finish bottom 4.

Sacking coaches ever 2-3 years has never helped St Kilda or Footscray (for example)
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I don't care about an individual leaving with dignity. Not the clubs problem. The club has moved on better Carlton people and will continue to do so again. The club recruited him to get us a premiership and gave him a 3 year contract to do it.
I want Carlton to be successful and if Mick cannot do it after 3 years or at least show the improvement we as a club expect then he goes and we get another person in who can.
 
Windhover said:
Don't quite follow you SBYM. You imply we have gone backwards under MM and are a laughing stock. Then you say give MM (more) time because we aren't stagnating and positive change is afoot. I am starting to see why we are a laughing stock however.:(
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Disingenuous and selective quoting...

Amongst football fans we are a laughing stock, that is undeniable, as is the fact we went backwards in quantifiable terms from 2013 to 2014...

However, I will argue until I'm blue in the face that our club is in a far better position to achieve sustained success in the future than it ever was under Brett Ratten, and that this has improved incrementally in each of MM's two years at the helm. My thoughts on this matter (see the Hawthorn comparison I made that you failed to include...) stem from my faith in stability.

Ratten had stability...he had five years and unfortunately peaked with a close SF loss, plus he was part of a regime that left the club in a shambles from a list/development perspective. I am convinced MM has made strong moves to rectify the latter, and it remains to be seen if he can improve on the former.

It is no coincidence that St Kilda has had a ridiculous amount of coaches throughout its history. Constant chopping and changing does nothing to build either a culture or environment of success.

We have come a long way to fixing past mistakes, let's not add to them by losing our nerve.
 
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gbatman said:
Pagan era failed because he had no players, had the worst list in the league and had no draft picks to start it off.

Not only this we had the worst equipped board, club and football department over the whole league. We had no money. We had nothing.

To back this up we had a board looking to do the impossible and that was a quick fix.

Pagan could coach but we gave him nothing. We had nothing and pushed him in the wrong direction and made things worse.

Had we picked Pagan, said well look we know things are bad, hit the list hard, go hard for the players we need, lets beef up the recruiting department and supply the guy with good football staff and put in a long term plan then I think we would have achieved something with Pagan. I have very few doubts Pagan would have had success with Carlton if we fully equipped him and supported him and were smarter about it.

This is the difference between him and Malthouse, at least we are trying to do the right thing this time and supporting the guy and build a competitive and healthy list and footy department.

There's a lot less chest pumping, bravado and board members thinking with their ego instead of their brains. There is still a bit of this going around as seen from Matheson earlier.

I don't expect Carlton to be a raging success this year. I think maybe we'll have a flourish towards the end of the season but in reality I think we'll be one of those teams battling it out to make the bottom of the top 8. I think we'll find we still have midfield depth issues and forward line issues and the possible changing of the guard with players could be disruptive and frustrating at times. I'd be glad to be surprised and do better though.
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Agree with everything you said about pagan. It would have been interesting had we given him another three years and plenty of freedom
 
Mick is definitely on the right path... His man management is easily the best the club has had since '99....!

He now has players that want to play for him and the list is 40% healthier than this time last year, we had less than 12 of our senior players able to run out a practice match this time last year. Today, we bat down to 25!

Looking forward to the team that lines up in 2 weeks!
 
Windhover said:
Murphy was a star in his first season and until injured the Rising Star favourite. He was regularly tagged as our most dangerous midfielder. I think Cripps should be a very solid contributor for us this year and I am hoping Menzel has the tank to now play top quality football all day instead of for 15 minutes.
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As good as those games were Windhover, 12 games in your first season and being injured for the remainder hardly qualifies Murphy as an week-in-week-out A-Grade midfielder. Being favourite to take out the Rising Star up until round 12 hardly qualifies one as a week-in-week-out A-Grade player. As a matter of fact only 1 of the last 10 winners of the Rising Star Award would have been considered as week-in-week-out A-Grader at the end of their first season, that being Joel Selwood. Most of the others ended up, or will end up, becoming week-in-week-out A-Graders.
Windhover said:
Port? When MM came to Carlton Port was a complete basket case. 2 years later you are lauding Port but claiming we need 5 years under MM in order to reach Port's level. Go figure.
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These are exactly the sort of skewed opinions one comes up with if you're unable look at things objectively. At least when Primus had the gig, Port still took care with their recruiting. To illustrate this point, Wingard, Ebert, Broadbent, Hartlett, Lobbe, O'Shea, Pittard, Neade, Trengove, Jonas and Mitchell had all had between 2 & 4 years in the system and were ready to step up when Hinkley arrived on the scene. When you add that lot to established players such as Westhoff, Boak, Gray, Schulz, Carlile, Stewart and Cornes then you've fair bit to work with. Lets sprinkle a few additions such as Wines, Hombsch, White, Polec, Monfries, Ryder, Impey & Colquhoun, then yeah, I think that they've done pretty well assembling a more than reasonable sort of list over the last 5 or 6 years. Port also gained a united board under David Koch around the same time Hinkley was appointed. In many ways, the building blocks were mostly already there (in a recruiting sense) before Hinkley arrived, but it took him & Koch to pull the club together as a whole.

If you don't like MM, just say so...but don't try to justify as to why he should be moved on by claiming Hinkley was the lone Messiah at Port when quite clearly he wasn't and it certainly took much longer than the last 2 years to assemble their current playing list.
 
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The Smoking Gun said:
...To illustrate this point, Wingard, Ebert, Broadbent, Hartlett, Lobbe, O'Shea, Pittard, Neade, Trengove, Jonas and Mitchell had all had between 2 & 4 years in the system and were ready to step up when Hinkley arrived on the scene. When you add that lot to established players such as Westhoff, Boak, Gray, Schulz, Carlile, Stewart and Cornes then you've fair bit to work with. Lets sprinkle a few additions such as Wines, Hombsch, White, Polec, Monfries, Ryder, Impey & Colquhoun, then yeah, I think that they've done pretty well assembling a more than reasonable sort of list over the last 5 or 6 years...

If you don't like MM, just say so...but don't try to justify as to why he should be moved on by claiming Hinkley was the lone Messiah at Port when quite clearly he wasn't and it certainly took much longer than the last 2 years to assemble their current playing list.
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The three highlighted above made their debuts in their 1st year on an ALF list (Port) so had instant impact. Neade and Mitchell made their AFL debuts 2013, Wingard in 2012. Port's recruiting post Choco (under Primus and Hinkley) has been very successful.

and

I think Windy has been nothing if not consistent in his (or her) dislike of MM.
 

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The consensus amongst the general AFL community is that Carlton won't win a flag in the next five years, so my counter argument is why replace Mick now, especially as the club's recruiting and development has improved since Malthouse arrived.

Also I am not convinced that Hinkley is that great a coach, more of a case that Matthew Primus was pretty much out of his depth as Port coah ..
 
"We can try, Master".

swarm-of-locusts-1.jpg
 
DaVillaBlues said:
The consensus amongst the general AFL community is that Carlton won't win a flag in the next five years, so my counter argument is why replace Mick now, especially as the club's recruiting and development has improved since Malthouse arrived.

Also I am not convinced that Hinkley is that great a coach, more of a case that Matthew Primus was pretty much out of his depth as Port coah ..
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Five years is a loooooooooong time to prognosticate with any certainty; in 4-5 years any team that gets it right should be challenging for a flag. As for Hinkley, he has only had a senior gig for two years...his record so far is pretty good.
 
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Mick won one grand final in 12 seasons at Collingwood. A monkey could've coached the eagles to its two premierships with the quality it had oozing from the list. He is given far too much credence. This is a business, not a charity. If he can't deliver then move on.
 
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