Andrew Stafford 

Blues get bullied by Kangaroos in horror show for Michael Voss

North Melbourne fall over the line to give heart to longsuffering fans. But Carlton have endured an even longer premiership drought
  
  

Michael Voss
‘Michael Voss is contracted until the end of 2026, but a contract is a mere piece of paper in this industry,’ Andrew Stafford writes. Photograph: Robert Cianflone/Getty Images

If you’ve had the acute misfortune of following the North Melbourne football club for the past decade, then Saturday’s victory over Carlton was a long time coming.

True, the Kangaroos have beaten Richmond and West Coast in the past month, but those are the only teams below them on the ladder. They were overdue a proper scalp: a win to show their longsuffering supporters that the AFL’s longest rebuild was finally bearing fruit.

Nine weeks ago, on Good Friday, Carlton towelled up North to the tune of 82 points. Since then, though, the Roos have improved. They drew with the Brisbane Lions in Hobart. They were within three points of ladder leaders Collingwood in round 11 before being blown away in the last quarter. They’ve lost three other games by less than two goals. Against Fremantle last week, far from Arden Street, they looked like they weren’t quite convinced they deserved to win.

That lack of conviction remained evident against Carlton. In the end, the Kangaroos did what you might call a reverse Bradbury: after building an unassailable lead, they fell in a heap on the final turn for home, yet still had enough momentum to slip and slide over the line. They didn’t register a solitary score in the last quarter. Carlton mustered five goals and five more behinds, but they’d left their charge too late.

Let’s pause for a moment and give appropriate credit to North. It might not have been a match for the ages, and they didn’t put their opponents away, as they should have. But they are a better team than their ladder position suggests. Coach Alastair Clarkson has knitted them into a combative and awkward proposition. Toby Pink – a rookie made good who kept the dual Coleman medallist Charlie Curnow goalless – epitomises their hard-nosed approach.

No fair-minded Carlton supporter will be blaming Curnow for Saturday’s horror show, though. He might be the most poorly served key forward in the competition. It’s not his fault that his midfielders keep bombing the ball high and shallow on to his head. Nor is it his fault that the Blues don’t have a posse of quality small forwards at his feet. For reasons no one can fathom, they gave away their best one (Matt Owies) to West Coast last year.

At the three-quarter time huddle, Carlton coach Michael Voss lined up his midfielders and publicly put them on blast. You don’t see those kinds of vein-popping sprays too often in modern football, mostly because they’re not considered to be very effective. Coaches risk losing their players, and ultimately their jobs for it. Voss found out the hard way when he was coaching Brisbane, the team he famously captained to three premierships.

But anyone who watched Carlton in the second and third quarters on Saturday can hardly blame Voss for venting his frustrations. It doesn’t matter that his team were missing two of their best in Sam Walsh and Harry McKay. As a player, Voss was an indomitable physical force who led from the front. As a coach, he has tried to mould teams in his own image. Carlton is a defence-first, contest-based team.

On Saturday they were – by Voss’s own admission – bullied. Patrick Cripps, the reigning Brownlow medallist, barely touched the ball in the second quarter, when North piled on six goals to zip. Ruckman Tom de Koning, who is weighing up a mega-offer to move to St Kilda at the end of the year, was rag-dolled by the bigger Tristan Xerri. At one point, Xerri crudely pushed his opponent into the fence. De Koning’s teammates barely protested.

Carlton’s supporters have endured an even longer premiership drought than North’s (30 years to North’s 26). And the Blues don’t historically tolerate long rebuilds. Voss is contracted until the end of 2026, but a contract is a mere piece of paper in this industry. He has lost a key supporter in Luke Sayers, who stepped down as club president in January. The incoming CEO, Graham Wright, who is about to take over from Brian Cook, will soon stretch his legs under his desk.

Wright can’t measure Voss’s performance without a realistic appraisal of the club’s list, as well as his assistants. The club is built around an elite core of Cripps, De Koning, Curnow, McKay (when fit), Walsh (ditto) and defender Jacob Weitering. The rest – as the legendary Hawthorn coach Allan Jeans once quipped – just run around. Carlton’s many role-players simply aren’t playing their roles well enough; on Saturday, their leaders failed too.

North supporters might have been left flat by their team’s late fade-out that has too often cost them victory. But they can take heart in the performances of Harry Sheezel, Tom Powell and Colby McKercher, and give thanks for the ballast provided by veteran recruits Luke Parker, Jack Darling and Caleb Daniel. They’re old enough to know that sometimes it doesn’t matter how you get the job done. Ask Steven Bradbury how he became an Olympic gold medallist.

 

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