Carlton (and Vossy) have gotta learn some lessons.

Carlton (and Vossy) have gotta learn some lessons.

GuyWhoLikesSport

I don’t know what’s wrong with Jared Leto.

He was good in Panic Room as a normal person. Now he’s a method actor making life miserable for everyone—with middling results.

Michael Voss is similarly intent on taking the path of most resistance to kick scores, even though Carlton is talent rich and could make minor tweaks to major effect.

Carlton is slow, but as good as anyone through the midfield forward line. They have A+ talent like Cripps and Curnow, as well as stars like Walsh, De Koning, McKay and the ascending Elijah Hollands.

With that top-end talent, they should be an elite team.

In some ways, they are.

Carlton was the league’s best contested ball team, and fourth best clearance team. They were footy’s third highest scorers, and the most efficient goal per inside 50 team.

In terms of method, they were fourth and fifth in footy at scoring from turnover and from the forward half, respectively. They were also a prolific stoppage scoring team, sitting fourth.

They struggled, however, to score from the back half.

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with having a favourite way to play, but the numbers bear out what the eye test showed.

Carlton left me feeling flaccid. They were the archetypal team of champions.

We saw the lack of connection most in their inability to score when they didn’t get a high turnover.

Despite having two of the seven best key forwards in footy, Carlton was 12th in marks inside 50 and 14th in mark inside 50 rate. They’re reprehensible numbers given the personnel.

I know their mids aren’t brilliant ball users, but the way they played didn’t give anyone a chance. The Blues got the ball to 70m out, stopped, then banged in black rats expecting their key forwards to like it.

The degree to which Curnow and McKay were making chicken shit out of chicken salad can be seen in the fact that Carlton was eighth in expected score but still third overall in scoring.

They kicked them from everywhere.

To a degree that’s sustainable because of the level of the players, but plan A has to be to make life easier and then have Charlie Curnow being a freak as a fallback option.

Curnow is injured to start the season anyway.

Currently, it’s a threes and layups attack that doesn’t get any layups.

To that end, I hope Michael Voss learned a few lessons from how badly they fell away last year.

The first lesson is to make sure Carlton varies its angles of attack coming from the back half. Last year they went in straight lines, partly because of a plodding midfield brigade.

Jagga Smith would have helped with this and would have sped up what threatens to be the slowest team in footy.

Frankly, though, if you’re betting on a first-year player to bring about wholesale change you have bigger problems.

With Walsh and the Hollands brothers, as well as Saad from the back half they have to open the game and to move the ball better. Voss knows it.

Despite worse personnel, Collingwood took two more marks inside 50 than Carlton because of how they changed angles and moved the ball with speed.

A cousin of the first lesson is that they need to be more open forward of centre.

It felt like there was always a morass of blue jumpers inside 50 for Carlton. While it helped pressure, it took more away than it gave.

Having more players higher up the ground to help with the run should do two things.

Firstly, the numbers can mitigate a lack of speed because you can move it by disposal rather than ball carrying, and create artificial speed with overlap. This should mitigate the loss of Smith.

Secondly, more numbers up the ground means there are fewer players inside 50. I’m not saying rerun Pagan’s paddock, but Curnow and McKay need more space to maximise their impact.

The final lesson is to keep the creative small forwards as forwards. I’m talking specifically about Matt Cottrell and Zac Williams. Both were swung around consistently by Michael Voss last year, partly out of necessity.

This year they need to play forward. They are the two players who can fashion something out of nothing.

It’s hard to score in modern footy, so put the creative guys around the goals and see if they can work some magic.

Looking at the age profile, Carlton need to win the whole thing in the next two years and they know it. The Jagga Smith trade shows how intrinsically they know it.

The coaching needs to make life easier on that talent.

Do I have faith? No. Do I see them either just making or just missing the finals? Yes.

 

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