If you think the club was totally controlled by sticks and the rest of the board were there to make up the numbers you're severely mistakenLiked your post BFL.
Wanted to pick up on a couple of things in your post:
Apart from Cripps, Hughes and Rogers made a number of poor choices at our first pick ... Boekhorst, Bootsma, Lucas, Watson, Menzel ... it goes on. One year they justified going for smaller players (Cripps and others) because they would take talls in the next year's draft, and they had chatted with Malthouse about it too ...
See: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/carlton...s/news-story/514e1172ead5291eb83125c8878ce0d1
And then the next year's trade they took Jacksch - the tall - and Whiley, our pick 7 given to GWS for pick 18 which was used for Boekhorst.
The Board did not react to our continued poor recruiting. It had appointed Malthouse mistakenly believing the list was on the cusp of top few and a premiership ('pinch one with Judd' I once read).
It was only when Kernahan moved on and MLG took the reins that the Board made decisive moves ...
Malthouse final nails ... This happened because he was simply the wrong coach for us and should never have been appointed. The Board dithered in sacking Malthouse, but then having finally realised that he was the wrong coach for us, went about getting the right coach for us.
Trigg, Silvagni and Bolton give me so much confidence that we are heading in the right direction ...
For too long our Board was very poor (it predated Kernahan's presidency).
Silvagni does stuff that Rogers and Hughes might not have imagined and if they did they certainly wouldn't have dared.
The total mismanagement of the club was a group effort and sticks was voted president unanimously six or seven years straight!
There's nothing to prove we're catching up at the moment
For sure we're improving but so is every club.
The way to make up ground is by being ground breaking with innovation..
Following other clubs won't cut it for ultimate success.