Universal Love Welcome to Carlton Graham Wright

[JJBagger]

Sliding doors moment.

If Wright is so vaunted as an exceptional picker of coaching talent... I refer to his decision to back Macrae and relegate Voss to not even making the 2nd round...

Then... surely you back a new coach, with new assistants, new gameplan, fresh start and a playing list culled of cultural drains....

New hope and goodwill from the fans buys time to re-adjust the club.


Instead, we have same same, and a greater calamity unfolding

Lol goodwill from the fans. Please! If we got a new coach and started the year 1-5, it would be the same rubbish

I agree Voss needs to go, but I think you are largely underestimating that a bigger plan may be in place

 

[Crippa#9]

Lol goodwill from the fans. Please! If we got a new coach and started the year 1-5, it would be the same rubbish

I agree Voss needs to go, but I think you are largely underestimating that a bigger plan may be in place

let's hope so otherwise we're all f*****

 

[blues4flag]

Anyone walking into a new environment in a senior role generally spends time assessing the organisation as a whole

Easy to create a vision and strategy, but it takes time to implement and gather buy in similar to rebuilding a list

Yep. They're also accountable to the decisions they make, unlike us hindsight warriors in the stands and the media.

Case in point - sack Voss, how dare he start Cripps on the bench against the Crows, that cost us the game.

The very next week - sack Voss, he starts the exact same midfield of Cerra, Walsh and Cripps and we got slaughtered at the start of the 4th. This guy never tries anything different.

 

[blues4flag]

Sliding doors moment.

If Wright is so vaunted as an exceptional picker of coaching talent... I refer to his decision to back Macrae and relegate Voss to not even making the 2nd round...

Then... surely you back a new coach, with new assistants, new gameplan, fresh start and a playing list culled of cultural drains....

New hope and goodwill from the fans buys time to re-adjust the club.


Instead, we have same same, and a greater calamity unfolding

Changing everything and hoping something sticks isn't how it works in the real world. You need a semblance of continuity and cohesion. How can you measure what's broken and assess improvement if you change every variable at once?

The reality is, we require a multi-year organisational change. I still maintain Voss could have worked in the right environment, coming into a club that had all it's shit together (and it almost did, for a year or two). Unfortunately that's not Carlton.

GW's approach is sensible. Start with the areas most in need of improvement and go from there. Voss comes next, it's inevitable now. Unfortunately we've gone from a team who is reliant on our stars to get a result, to a much more balanced team who can compete well enough, but lack the absolute star factor players who can step up in big moments.

 

[muzza99]

Changing everything and hoping something sticks isn't how it works in the real world. You need a semblance of continuity and cohesion. How can you measure what's broken and assess improvement if you change every variable at once?

The reality is, we require a multi-year organisational change. I still maintain Voss could have worked in the right environment, coming into a club that had all it's shit together (and it almost did, for a year or two). Unfortunately that's not Carlton.

GW's approach is sensible. Start with the areas most in need of improvement and go from there. Voss comes next, it's inevitable now. Unfortunately we've gone from a team who is reliant on our stars to get a result, to a much more balanced team who can compete well enough, but lack the absolute star factor players who can step up in big moments.

I have no faith in this guy whatsoever as a CEO. He needs to play in his footy dept sandbox. Nothing astute or intellgent was uttered in the press conference yesterday. Dear in the headlights comes to mind.....and clearly no emotional intelligence.

 

[WalshistheGOAT]

I have no faith in this guy whatsoever as a CEO. He needs to play in his footy dept sandbox. Nothing astute or intellgent was uttered in the press conference yesterday. Dear in the headlights comes to mind.....and clearly no emotional intelligence.

No emotional intelligence and a deer in the headlights but you still think he would do well in a footy dept?

Please make it make sense

 

[Faz 2000]

All season we've been lamenting how off-the-pace the club's decisions-making has been from a football perspective.

It has seemed as though they're not noticing patterns in games - eg. "why don't we put someone on player X?"
Or ridiculously slow to react to in-game trends - eg. "opposition have kicked a couple, why do we keep rushing and giving it back instead of tempo?"

Based on the Hollands situation, I've been thinking about it for days, and broadly break things down into 3 concepts:

1. Observation. The data-gathering processes (stats, GPS, rotations, etc), conversations with players (eg. by a trainer), as well as good, old-fashioned watching the game. Watching the players, watching the conditions, watching the opposition. Input for decision-making. Insights. Intelligence.

2. Communication. Who tells who what? Which intelligence gets passed on? In what format is the information passed on? Is the insight/intelligence time-critical, requiring an urgent action or response, or can it be collated/reported later on? Are the messages acknowledged? Who checks that messages are received? What are the triggers for communicating something, or escalating? Comms is about sharing the intelligence gathered, to prompt and inform decision-making.

3. Decision-makers. Line-coach. Head-coach. Club doctor. Management. These would presumably be the types of people who are empowered and expected to make decisions on gameday based on the prompts and intelligence that is communicated from the staff. Some decisions are big, some are small. There should be clarity over which role makes what decision, based on authority, qualifications, role, etc. Eg. The doctor decides on a concussion, not the CEO. The line-coach switches match-ups, not the trainer. The Head of Football Operations hires coaches, not the Head of the Fan Club.

Hardly an exhaustive, all-inclusive model, but something to talk to.

Which brings me to... this Hollands fiasco casts a whole different perspective on Carlton Football Club's processes and protocols. For things to play out how they did on Thursday, there must have been catastrophic failures in 1, 2 or 3 of these areas.

It beggars belief that the failure could solely be in area #1 - Observation. A hell of a lot of people at the MCG noticed Hollands was a mess. So did the commentators. So did people watching on TV at home. So did the opposition. So did TEAMMATES.

So between areas 2 and 3 there are massive issues.

Did the message go up that Hollands wasn't right?
If NO, why did nobody associated with the CFC think it was important? Or feel that they had insight/intelligence that was worth sharing?
If YES...

Did the message reach the right person?
If NO, where did it get lost? Why didn't the person reporting the issue try again? What are the protocols for making sure your message gets through if it's important? Who did it go to and why didn't they take action?
If YES...

Did that person decide that Hollands should be removed from the game?
IF NO, why the hell not? Was the message garbled? Did they decide the best thing for Hollands was to push through? Did they determine that Carlton playing a man-down was a good thing? On what basis did they make that call?
If YES...

How come it didn't happen until Q4?
Was the decision communicated, clearly, back to the bench and the box?
Did the decision get over-ruled? By who? On what basis?

I've got a million more questions. I know it sounds chicken little, but I think this is evidence of the club being in absolute disarray. If our comms, decision-making, intelligence and governance is so bad that we can have the Hollands situation play out the way it did, NO WONDER the fundamentals required to win games of football are not being executed.

 

[muzza99]

No emotional intelligence and a deer in the headlights but you still think he would do well in a footy dept?

Please make it make sense

Boot studder comes to mind....But come on, if you think what he said yesterday was befitting of an intelligent CEO then we have problems.

 

[Faz 2000]

I'm still steamed and coming up with questions and scenarios....

Even if the club claims they knew he wasn't do well, even IF they somehow believed him continuing to play was not a well-being risk for him, HOW UTTERLY INEPT are our in-game performance metrics to not detect that Hollands was utterly useless out there in a winning-the-game sense?

PLENTY of players this year at many clubs have played low % gametime... yet somehow the Carlton Football Club, with all our laptops, high-performance experts and data analytics still went "yep, send Elijah out again".

Without any mental health issues/drugs or whatever, the eyeball test would have had any coach in the past 100 years just benching Hollands for being utterly ineffective.

Was he being played out of empathy? Charity? Equal opportunity? Inclusiveness?

This is elite professional sport!

HOW HOW HOW HOW.

I can only trust that Wright is asking these same questions.

 

[WalshistheGOAT]

Boot studder comes to mind....But come on, if you think what he said yesterday was befitting of an intelligent CEO then we have problems.

What exactly were you expecting him to say? Should he have come out with an explanation of how dark matter and gamma radiation work to show off his mental prowess?

The club was 2 days into an unprecedented investigation about a highly sensitive topic, being pressured by the AFL, media and God knows who else (let's hope not Worksafe) to give a statement on a situation we've never seen in this space before. There's only so much he can say without putting the club at further risk of repercussions.

Talk about an overreaction

 

[ajb72]

I'm still steamed and coming up with questions and scenarios....

Even if the club claims they knew he wasn't do well, even IF they somehow believed him continuing to play was not a well-being risk for him, HOW UTTERLY INEPT are our in-game performance metrics to not detect that Hollands was utterly useless out there in a winning-the-game sense?

PLENTY of players this year at many clubs have played low % gametime... yet somehow the Carlton Football Club, with all our laptops, high-performance experts and data analytics still went "yep, send Elijah out again".

Without any mental health issues/drugs or whatever, the eyeball test would have had any coach in the past 100 years just benching Hollands for being utterly ineffective.

Was he being played out of empathy? Charity? Equal opportunity? Inclusiveness?

This is elite professional sport!

HOW HOW HOW HOW.

totally agree. If you aware of a player having issues and he is being totally ineffective, then why are you continuing to send him out there?

 

[CCurnow3picks]

Good lord - some weird agendas on show in here this morning.

The bottom line is we all have about 20% of the full picture re Elijah, Voss’ tenure, list management, player development, Wrights ability as CEO…

Yet some are happy to claim other CEO’s are speaking openly to others about Wright’s ineptitude as CEO?

 

[allrighty]

Hello as a former ceo a few times myself it's worth remembering that Wright will be acting under delegations from the Board. There are boundaries around what he can and can't do or say. The Voss $ for instance may be higher than his authority. But it is correct that he is the public face and culture setter so he has to be clear in his comms and not wishy washy - e.g. I suspect or I'm pretty sure.

Also turning around a mess as CEO is a very difficult thing to do. Decisions and consequences in every direction.

I wish you well but I do think a couple of key changes might just give it all a spark. Voss sounds to me like he is reading from a playbook. For me he could bring a bit more of that fire he had as a player. Much and all as Bevo at the woofers is an angry little ant there is no secret about how he is feeling.

 

[Jimmae]

Wright is a CEO on training wheels. I know an ex AFL CEO across 2 clubs who when we announced him as Cooks successor in early 2025, said to me... good football boss NOT a CEO... not up to it, and Hawthorn/Collingwood dont get much wrong on this front when picking their leaders

So Pert, Jackson, Ireland, or Trigg. Probably not Ireland.

Don't care.

 

[myblueroan]

Hello as a former ceo a few times myself it's worth remembering that Wright will be acting under delegations from the Board. There are boundaries around what he can and can't do or say. The Voss $ for instance may be higher than his authority. But it is correct that he is the public face and culture setter so he has to be clear in his comms and not wishy washy - e.g. I suspect.

Also turning around a mess as CEO is a very difficult thing to do. Decisions and consequences in every direction.love the

I wish you well but I do think a couple of key changes might just give it all a spark. Voss sounds to me like he is reading from a playbook. For me he could bring a bit more of that fire he had as a player. Much and all as Bevo at the woofers is an angry little ant there is no secret about how he is feeling.

Love the Thunderbirds avatar.

 

[muzza99]

What exactly were you expecting him to say? Should he have come out with an explanation of how dark matter and gamma radiation work to show off his mental prowess?

The club was 2 days into an unprecedented investigation about a highly sensitive topic, being pressured by the AFL, media and God knows who else (let's hope not Worksafe) to give a statement on a situation we've never seen in this space before. There's only so much he can say without putting the club at further risk of repercussions.

Talk about an overreaction

OK...bottom line it would have been nice if he had not read from a script...secondly, it would have been nice if could have read it with some sort of coherence...slurring and mumbling a script without conviction is not a great endorsement of what he was meant to be saying....Thirdly, his responses to the journalists questions were not highly intellgent responses. I suspect we will need to agree to disagree but he is not CEO material at least in front of a camera. I am yet to see that behind the camera as well, as yet.

 

[macky99]

OK...bottom line it would have been nice if he had not read from a script...secondly, it would have been nice if could have read it with some sort of coherence...slurring and mumbling a script without conviction is not a great endorsement of what he was meant to be saying....Thirdly, his responses to the journalists questions were not highly intellgent responses. I suspect we will need to agree to disagree but he is not CEO material at least in front of a camera. I am yet to see that behind the camera as well, as yet.

I believe many posters need to cool down & wait until all the facts are put together.
As mentioned previously mental health is very challenging topic and to treat it with positive outcomes.

So many people making assumptions without the appropriate level of detail.

Wright is copping alot of unfair commentary here, he has a very good track record so give the guy a couple of years but we see the full degree of change that will continue the next 12-18 months.

 

[Korn]

totally agree. If you aware of a player having issues and he is being totally ineffective, then why are you continuing to send him out there?

People at the game can correct me on this. But it seems he is at least competing but just without success. Our coaches just assumed he was just having a really shit game and that's why he was still out there.

 

[jj1978]

Going swimmingly.

If that was the difficult decision he wanted to define the start of his tenure on, then Wright deserves his own reckoning by all... except yourself it seems

I would suspect GW's football brain wanted Voss gone, but now forced to wear the CEO hat and probably under advisement from Cook told to hold due to financial constraints and optics. I keep harping on this, but FFS pay over the soft cap for 2-3 years and get the right people and all the support needed till we see momentum in the right direction. Football is our core MO and we suck at it in every facet.

 

[Blue Pulse]

Interesting isn't it, Wright was meant to come in, wave his magic wand and 30 years of trash administration would be gone and everything would be roses.

To do things properly, he would have to find out what is working and what isn't. He would now know a majority of what is and isn't but can't change everything all at once as everything will come to a stand still. He will need time.

With regards to Hollands, he has to now investigate the whole matter from start to finish, medical feedback, coaches, trainers, players to try and make some sense of what should never have taken place.

I would be surprised if it was alcohol, as surely it would have been smelt or detected in his behaviour before he went out onto the field?

I am still trying to work out how, in this day and age, with all the eyes on the game and professionals on hand, including the players, so called team mates, AFL and to a lesser extent, opposition feedback, how he was left on the ground for such a period of time?

I wish Elijah all the best with his health and hope he gets the care that is needed to make a full recovery.

 

[teagueyubeauty]

He has a responsibility for setting culture, leading, standards and accountability.

He as CEO is ultimately accountable.

Voss failure and choosing to stick with Voss not sack him, is on Wright

Signing off on Lij back on the list and placing structures to support him to not have a public collapse... its Wright overseeing Davies... who Wright recruited

Wright is a CEO on training wheels. I know an ex AFL CEO across 2 clubs who when we announced him as Cooks successor in early 2025, said to me... good football boss NOT a CEO... not up to it, and Hawthorn/Collingwood dont get much wrong on this front when picking their leaders

Collingwood? The one with a racist CEO currently meant to be rolling out their anti racist program

 

[Blue_Fusion]

Interesting isn't it, Wright was meant to come in, wave his magic wand and 30 years of trash administration would be gone and everything would be roses.

To do things properly, he would have to find out what is working and what isn't. He would now know a majority of what is and isn't but can't change everything all at once as everything will come to a stand still. He will need time.

With regards to Hollands, he has to now investigate the whole matter from start to finish, medical feedback, coaches, trainers, players to try and make some sense of what should never have taken place.

I would be surprised if it was alcohol, as surely it would have been smelt or detected in his behaviour before he went out onto the field?

I am still trying to work out how, in this day and age, with all the eyes on the game and professionals on hand, including the players, so called team mates, AFL and to a lesser extent, opposition feedback, how he was left on the ground for such a period of time?

I wish Elijah all the best with his health and hope he gets the care that is needed to make a full recovery.

I wasn't expecting a magic wand to be waved by him.

I think not sacking Voss was a calculated move to ensure we don't have the stigma of sacking another coach as well as allowing us time to get the replacement we want and finally, it ensures we don't win too many games this year.

It's not GW's fault that Elijah was allowed to take the field and stay on the field as long as he did.

This gives him fuel now to justify not renewing Voss even though the results would've taken care of that anyway.

But the incompetence extends beyond Vossy here too and CD has a lot to answer for here imo.

 

[Sam The Doc]

The ultimate Carlton move would be to sack Voss today so the media forgets about the Elijah Hollands situation.

Nah there is no forgetting. Very depressing and embarrassing situation we have here...

 

[teagueyubeauty]

Going swimmingly.

If that was the difficult decision he wanted to define the start of his tenure on, then Wright deserves his own reckoning by all... except yourself it seems

The Carlton frothers that demand sackings after sackings because that’s always been such a successful outcome will get their wish soon enough.
The majority who are just flipping sick and tired of a single person being blamed were just happy the club gave them the right to turn things around.
Now it hasn’t worked and most likely won’t but that does not mean it was a bad decision AT ALL.
Carlton lack severe credibility from a coaching standpoint across the entire league, we make decisions to back coaches then **** them off early continuously. It’s a shocking look to potential employees, I believe it was more a point about historical cultural change just as much as anything else.

 

[Faz 2000]

FWIW, I'm not laying the blame for the Hollands debacle at Wright's feet. But I am expecting him to be asking the hard questions and driving to address the failings that allowed the situation to occur. As a pro, I expect him to straight-bat to the media and not offer tons, but he'll know this is going to require some explanation in due course. I see this past weekend as irrefutable evidence of how busted some of our systems are within the club. Nobody at the club can come out and say "we run tight, elite, high-quality processes here" and expect to be believed.