The Complicated Legacy of Michael Voss 

Michael Voss has the look and feel of a man that is currently being tortured by his dream.  

He looks like Fabio Wardley right at the end of his war with Danny Dubois, where he knew that his dream of being the champ was probably dead this time, but he’d still swing a few haymakers just in case a miracle happens. 

He knows it’s a matter of when not if he’s given his marching orders, but he still has his boys fighting on grimly while they’re in his charge.  

On Friday night, once again, they were competitive and carried a never say die attitude right the way into their death. 

That deep, genuine competitive spirit has pervaded Voss’ time at Carlon. And that fact that his charges haven’t let that slip even as they’ve slipped out of premiership contention and into a meme is a credit to Voss.  

It’s the biggest complicating factor of his legacy.  

Over their last three coaches, the on-field Carlton product has reflected the man in charge.  

Under Brendan Bolton, they were bookish, defensive, and lacked toughness and hard- bitten competitiveness.  

When the Teague Train took over as the interim coach then eventually as the full-time man, they were undisciplined and occasionally exciting but often, again, uncompetitive and soft.  

Under Voss, the Blues have played like the man in charge used to. They’ve been hard and uncompromising. They’ve been hyper-competitive and have carried themselves like prizefighters at times, looking to drag opposition teams into deep water and drown them with experience. 

And all that doggedness and fight hasn’t just been for respectability. He’s delivered unparalleled results in Carlton’s recent history. The Blues had three straight 10+ win seasons for the first time 2011-2013 between 2022-2024. He also, crucially, delivered Carlton their first finals victory since 2013 and their first preliminary final since 2000.  

But more than any of that, he gave Blues fans hope. He gave them an identity that they could believe in. Voss and the captain Patrick Cripps have imbued the footy club with a level of doggedness that Blues fans would have killed John Elliott for when Bolton was in charge. 

To underline the point, from 2022-2025 the Blues were worse than second in contested ball differential. This year is the nadir of that stat under Voss. They are fifth. 

They, like Voss, don’t know how not to fight on the inside.  

That gift has also, as has been said so often, been their curse.  

When teams have taken the Blues outside, Carlton simply can’t run with opposition teams. Many will lay that blame at the feet of Michael Voss, but it seems to me that he’s done his job.  

The Blues play like a Voss team, even as footy has moved away from the Voss model.  

The man has butted up against the roof of his own ability and Carlton hasn’t enabled or forced any growth. 

The Blues haven’t put enough coaches around Voss, or enough good runners on the park as the game has changed, to get Carlton to at least keep up as opposition teams run away from them.  

Richmond under Damien Hardwick were reborn when Justin Leppitsch came aboard, bringing a level of Xs and Os excellence that Hardwick didn’t quite have.  

Carlton never did the same for Voss. They and Voss raged against the dying of their game. 

He’s been like Jack Torrance in The Shining. 

The Carlton footy club probably had about as much bad juju as The Overlook did when Voss walked in. While no father has killed his kids there, the ghosts of a million once promising careers are haunting the hallways.  

But Voss walked in, like Jack, thinking it was perfect for him. It was a circuit breaker. He had clean slate and a job to do. But as time went on, and he kept click clacking at that typewriter and getting nowhere.  

He kept doing what he knew and it just didn’t work, and there was no external structure there to save him.  

All work and no play has made Michael a confused boy.  

We’ve seen that confusion time and again as he’s stood by the bench with his arms folded, glaring at the field while the opposition’s light show for every goal flashes overhead, occasionally showing the eyes of a man who has no answers.  

We’ve seen the confusion in his face as he fiddles with magnets on a whiteboard, as if a positional change can fix whatever rot has set into the collective Blues brain.  

We even saw the confusion as he lashed out at the media criticising his club’s atrocious handling of the Elijah Hollands mental health situation a couple of weeks ago. 

Time and again, especially this year, Voss has simply had nowhere to turn and nobody available to bail him out of the death spiral his club is in. 

Belatedly the Blues have tried to get away from their identity. They’ve tried to put more guys who run and carry in the team, led by Jagga Smith but also consistently picking more direct players like Cooper Lord.  

It hasn’t particularly helped as the stars around whom the club was built have gotten older. It also hasn’t particularly helped because this is still, and who knows for how much longer, a Michael Voss footy club. 

And Michael Voss footy clubs are what they are. 

They’re tough. They’re mean. They’re competitive. They’re also behind the times in modern footy.  

That’s the complication of Michael Voss: He drove up expectations at Carlton for the first time in a decade, but has failed to live up to them.