Graham Wright as Carlton CEO

[Del239335]

Much has been spoken about Graham Wright and his track record at Hawthorn and Collingwood.
One of his first moves after arriving at Carlton was to keep Voss for 2026 which certainly raised a few eyebrows.

Wright made moves to bring in new assistant coaches, and there were people who justified this by pointing out how Richmond kept Hardwick while bringing in new assistant coaches, look at how it turned out for Richmond.

Wright also ticked off the decision to give Sam Walsh

18

Sam Walsh

Age

25

Ht

184cm

Wt

84kg

Pos.

Mid

Career

Season

Last 5

D

25.1

5star

K

13.5

5star

HB

11.6

5star

M

5.1

5star

T

3.2

5star

CL

3.4

5star

No current season stats available

D

26.2

5star

K

15.4

5star

HB

10.8

5star

M

6.0

5star

T

3.2

5star

CL

4.8

5star

an 8 year contract on the eve of the season, another decision that raised eyebrows as Carlton need salary cap space to rejuvinate their side and Walsh is a tier below the top midfielders in the AFL who clubs give big contracts to eg. Butters and Bontempelli.

It's obviously early days as Wright only started at Carlton last year, but do you think he is making the right moves so far?
Do you think Carlton can become a relevant football club again with Wright as their CEO?

 

[Crankyhawk]

I think we have seen this thread before or similar - maybe use the search function

 

[The Old Dark Navy's]

He only took over late last year. He had training wheels before that.

This is the last year of Vossy's contract. It's entirely likely that nobody that Wright wanted was available this year, so we've saved money, made some changes and given Voss a grace period to save his job.

It's not really thread worthy just yet.

 

[Osho]

It's certainly eyebrow raising.

 

[nut]

Graham needs to own it

 

[outabounds]

I'm going to say as it is. By him commiting to Voss, Carlton have been commited to an other wasted year. Not only that, we lost a couple of handy players because Voss is still around. I'd say what is going on right now is more on Wright than Voss because he should have had the balls to make a call.

 

[Bunk Moreland]

There’s no guarantee there’ll be success for Wright. No one person, be it a coach or administrator, achieves it on their own. Expecting that is misguided. There’s no messiah out there.

You see the same thing in business. Success happens when there’s a correlation of the right people, environment and good fortune. It’s very, very seldom down to one person, no matter who gets labeled the genius.

Coaches are the same. You see “successful” coaches transplanted into new clubs and they can’t replicate it because they don’t have the same group of people or circumstances around them.

 

[Former Decathlete]

Carlton are a basket case and one man (Wright) won't make a difference either way.

 

[RAPPA]

I see the commitment to Voss to see out his contract as face saving exercise to avoid the stock standard “Carlton sacked another coach” and the preferred candidate not being available last year. Make no mistake, Voss’ contract wont be extended

 

[WesternSydneyHawk]

Much has been spoken about Graham Wright and his track record at Hawthorn and Collingwood.

Graham Wright rightly deserves a lot of credit for the crucial role in building the threepeat teams Hawthorn. But it wasn't all his doing.
What Graham us exceptionally good at is looking at a strong list that's already going deep into September, identifying where the gaps are between that list and a Premiership list, and then bringing in the players to fill those gaps.

So when he got to Hawthorn in 2007, he inherited a talented young list from Chris Pelchen. He then identified where there were gaps, and recruited guys like Shaun Burgoyne, David Hale, Josh Gibson, Jack Gunston, Brian Lake, and Ben McEvoy.

What he didn't do was draft the core of that playing group. Guys like Luke Hodge, Sam Mitchell, Jordan Lewis, Buddy Franklin, Jarryd Roughead, Luke Breust, Cyril Rioli, etc., were all there when he got there.

So he took a list that probably would have challenged for a flag in the early 2010s, and built it into a threepeat list.

When he joined Collingwood in 2021, it was a similar story. Most of their 2023 Premiership side was already in place. He just added the final players to turn a very good side into one that won a flag.

So he deserves credit for that. There's a lot if talented teams that just fall short of winning a premiership.

But.

What he's not so good at is building a side from scratch through the draft, or taking a middle of the road side to one that wins a flag.

People forget that he was Brisbane's recruiter from 2004 to 2007. That's just after their threepeat.

What followed was a decade of mediocrity and failure for the Lions. Ironically, with Voss as coach.

He was also the list manager and then head of football at Hawthorn from 2016 to 2021. And he deserves credit for bringing in guys like Tom Mitchell and Karl Amon.

But he was also responsible for overpaying for Chad Wingard and Jaeger O'Meara, and basically building a middle of the road side.

The long-term impact of his time at Collingwood remains to be seen.

Now, looking at Carlton's list, I'd be inclined to say it looks closer to 2004 Brisbane or 2016 Hawthorn, than to 2008 Hawthorn or 2021 Collingwood.

I think his talents might be put to better use at a club like Adelaide, or Gold Coast, which are arguably a couple of players away from sustained premiership success, than at Carlton.

 

[LeBronco]

Carlton made the right decision to keep Voss even though he's shown this year he doesn't have what it takes to turn Carlton into a contender the sad truth is they needed to stick with him to show they are becoming a less toxic and more stable football club in order to make themselves an attractive prospect for future coaches, look at Richmond when they kept Danny Frawley for the entirety of his contract it was the beginning of Richmond becoming more stable and they only ended up with Frawley in the first place because no one else wanted the job. There is more pain for Carlton ahead but Brian Cook did a good job at laying the groundwork for the club to become more professional and he's left Graham Wright a solid platform to work with, also it's worth remembering that Wright left Voss off the short-list for the Collingwood coaching position when they were looking for a replacement for Buckley which suggests that Wright knows Voss isn't up to it but he had to keep him for reasons mentioned earlier in this post.