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Chapter 1: What insights does Ken Hinkley offer about coaching departures?
Ken Hinckley is with me. Hello, Kenny.
Morning, Gerard.
How are you today? I'm good. I'm good. So your first experience from our side of the fence of a coaching departure. How did you take it all in yesterday?
Yeah, well, interesting is probably not quite the accurate word, but fascinating when you think about some of the things that were being said and done prior to the actions being taken by Michael and the club over the weekend.
Chapter 2: How did Michael Voss's coaching tenure impact Carlton?
because of the build-up and all the scenarios that were going around, the performance of Carlton and their fade-outs that were real for everyone to see. Then the admission of the list being not quite as strong as it needed to be with the list manager leaving late last night when we were actually on doing the show.
So there was a fair bit to play at yesterday and there was a lot of consequences and fortunately for Carlton, For Michael, the great consequence for him is that he now gets a break and he gets to breathe a little and not have to deal with the scrutiny that he was copping for the last nine weeks in AFL football because that's real.
When the ledger says 1-8 and you're at a Carlton football club who wanted better than that, you're always faced with the questions every Monday, every game day after the game.
after the performance, and you have to try and explain to them, I thought Michael did an amazing job right through those first nine rounds to hold his head high and try and put some perspective into the performance, but the reality was 1-8 was always a troubling moment.
The press conference was notable for that. There was a lot of effort made to say this is not about wins and losses, and yet it repeatedly deferred to 1-8 as sort of an inevitability. Here's just a little taster.
I mean, we're 1-8. As Graeme said, like, we're 1-8. So I think we've won 12 games out of the last 40. Same again. I think we're 1-8, 12-40. We're 1-8. No Carlton supporter wants to be sitting here at 1-8. And we're not sitting here today saying it's just win-loss.
There are universal truths that run through this and repeated themes. It's hard to land that press conference. I always think that. But there is a level of losing that just doesn't get absorbed.
And that's exactly right. That little clip there was perfect. That's the reality. One and eight is the scoreboard and the scoreboard always gets you. Everyone knows that in footy and everyone who goes into coaching knows that. If the scoreboard gets that bad, and I did hear 12 and 42 was what I think I heard at one stage too.
So ultimately there was just too big a gap between the wins and losses for the players. for the Carlton hierarchy to continue with Michael. I think it was untidy at the end of last year, let's be pretty clear. There wasn't a lot of hope, I think, for people who sat outside of Carlton that Michael would make it through to the end of this year and get renewed.
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Chapter 3: What are the consequences of a poor season for a coach?
That's exactly how it played out. Michael said, no, this is going nowhere. And the club said, yeah, we agree. And it's time for us to part ways. And I think both parties, this is the first time I've viewed it from the outside, as you said, I think both parties handled it pretty well with as good as they can. You've got to try and explain a performance and a sacking of a coach.
It's not going to be easy at any time, I don't think. It's just more around the reality is we're not where we want to be We need to make change. What other options do we have? They've changed the CEO. They've changed the football manager. They've now changed list and recruiting manager. They've changed the president. Everyone knows we can't change 44 players.
So you're stuck with one change, and that's the coach, unless you're big enough and brave enough to try and back the coach in, which end results get you.
The vulnerability of a coach when those key posts change. So neither the president, the CEO or the GM of footy was responsible for hiring Voss. So all of those who made the decision and were wedded to him was gone. And so that's an impossible scenario to survive as well, isn't it?
Well, it feels like it, not having been through that at any stage, because I had at Port all the way through, basically had David the whole way and, you know, I had Chris for 10 years and, you know, had Keith Thomas and Matthew Richardson, who Matthew was a part of the club at the same time. So it was almost continuous all the way through.
We all had the, you know, the same direction and we probably managed to get through that. But at Carlton, it does give you an escape clause, Gerard. That's what it gives you. as the CEO, as the, you know, footy manager, and as the president, because they're the three key figureheads. They make all the decisions.
The three decisions underneath that have been list manager, recruiting, and now coach. Those three gentlemen were making those decisions and they had no connection to the original appointment. So, yeah, it gives them a little bit of freedom, I imagine, to say, well, that's not what I would have done. But now, now there's a challenge. Now this is what you're going to do.
So what are you going to do?
So we'll delve there in a tick. Just before we leave the Voss years, I'm riveted by the patch that they have. So first year, 2022, they play popcorn football. Their games were unmissable. They were thunderously exciting and mad cap, and they end up missing the finals because of the Jamie Elliott kick. Michael goes, that's unsustainable and trades a lot of their excitement for defence, right?
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Chapter 4: How does coaching impact player morale and club culture?
Now, you coached through this phase. Can you rationalise the rise and disappearance of the Vos Blues?
Not really, not really. But, you know, you always go into that honeymoon of you get on a roll, it starts to happen. You know, I went through like we won 13 straight in one year. And you go, you get on that roll and it's really hard to see anything going wrong. But it does go wrong.
Vossi's probably biggest concern, well, biggest issue was probably made that prelim final and looked like going to make a grand final. And then from that point on, Everyone's expectation at the club just grows and goes through the roof because the obvious step is you're going to win a flag.
And when you don't get to that point and when it becomes out of reach as the next season unfolded and you said your movie choice was strange but your outcome was the same, it was what happened? What happened? And from that point on, what continued to happen? is Carlton just weren't anywhere near the side. And, you know, they got through that period. Remember that, was it 23, as you said?
I think they were 9-4 or 4-9, sorry, 4-9 at one point before they got on a run. You know, and I think even Brisbane in that same year, both those teams were actually... not going great at the halfway mark of the season and one turns into a grand final, one turns into a prelim final.
So it was quite a unique year with the rise from underneath to come up in season because that doesn't happen very often. And then Carlton just lost their, you know, Well, did the game lose their identity? Maybe more so. The game's changed. The game went into offence and went in a bit more attacking football stand and all the things that we now know and accept as real in the game.
And their list build was probably perfectly built for... The Vossi style of football, and that was win the contest, surge it forward, own the territory and defend your front half. And when that changed somewhat, did Carlton's list have enough change in it to be able to change with it and stay with it? And the answers we've got are clear, no.
They just didn't have it, whether that be unavailable or capability, you know, and enough of the youth coming through at the right time. Because there's a bit of work to be done on that list when you look at it from afar now. And only now you sit back and go, well, where's the actual list at? Because it can't seem to play modern football for four quarters.
That's the really strange part, though, Gerard. I go, gee, I've seen them in the last two quarters last week play some... Great football and a lot of the season I've seen him play some great first half football. The list somehow has some part of it that's capable. It's just a matter of doing it for four quarters. And is that the ability to cover the ground for the full four quarters?
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Chapter 5: What challenges does Carlton face in rebuilding its culture?
And it might be quite harder to explain that to some people. So that's when culture gets tested. Are the people at the top willing to understand the detail in the build? And if they're not, culture will break. If that's your definition of culture, I think it's more around good people doing their best every day that they turn up for the football club and being really honest with where they're at.
That's when you get good. I used to say this to David. David Koch regularly. Dave, we've got a very good culture, but unfortunately we can't claim it because we never won. So culture, but that's what kept us and me in my job for such a long period of time, for 13 years, was because we did have a great culture. And people who will be listening say, oh, yeah, losing culture.
Well, we didn't have a losing culture. We had a high-performance culture that understood the challenges of winning and losing. So I think that's where the difference is. And for Graeme and Rob to find this path now and stay on it, I'll be really fascinated to watch and see when that first bump comes. what does culture do and how does it play out?
Because Carlton can't just be the senior coach. It's so simplistic when it comes to the Blues, and this is why they live in the 80s. They have tried them all. That list is the messiah, the succession plan, the best credentialed assistant, the favourite son, the caretaker, and the recycled.
They have chosen every genre of coach, and every one of them has been chewed up and spat out in this 25-year period.
with a lot of change, with a lot of other change, isn't it? A lot of presidents change and CEO changes. So there's been lots of change around it because at some point, someone in that organisation gets really impatient or really unhappy and they fire the gun and that gets someone, that lands on someone and then it sets you back. That's the problem.
The first thing I said, my view was the first thing you can provide is strong stability. at an environment. Now, and I remember saying this to Port at the time when I signed in 2012, the end of 2012, it was like, I won't accept anything less than a four-year deal because otherwise in two years' time we'll be back here. because we were at a ground zero place of five wins in a season.
We weren't going ā the club was in not a great place, had lost the players. The player had lost his life, unfortunately, in a pre-season, and we hadn't had maybe staff to coach. So my first thought was you've just got to provide stability and you've got to get complete trust with the main people involved, and that's what I was lucky enough to get.
David, Keith, and myself, when we first went in there, we were on the same page that good people ā and stability were the critical pieces to success, and invest in your footy program. Not rip your footy program. Invest in your footy program. Bring in good people. Hopefully guide them in what's good practice and best practice and enjoy the trip.
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Chapter 6: How does Ken Hinkley compare coaching styles and their effectiveness?
So I sent him a message to make sure he's going okay.
15 weeks for an interim coach is a long time. I'd be worried if I was a captain with an interim coach for 15 weeks. To be fair, it could be different because we only had three weeks. But I felt like if we had four, like we would be struggling. Like it was almost three was right on the amount. The future is just out of the building. So you don't really know where it's going.
And that's a weird place for a footballer to be.
So a weird place for a footballer to be. And it's such a long period of time, Kenny. Not the easiest to negotiate?
No.
No, it won't be. It won't be easy to negotiate because what Max said, footballers, you know, they're looking for who's in charge and where's the future. The future was out of the building in his mind and that's quite challenging. I mean, I lived the succession planning which made that much easier and I lived it for 23 weeks.
as a succession plan so that we knew what the future was, but it was inside the building. And I think that was really, really important. Josh was there to make going forward decisions around lists and stuff like that and what he was looking for for the future. That made our situation much, much easier. But when you've got 15 weeks and you don't know who the next coach is, you don't know ā
what the future is. There'll be so many players in that place now going, well, where's my future? What am I going to be doing? Will I be at the Carlton Football Club next year? They'll go into individuals. They'll go into self-preservation mode. That's just what they have to. And, you know, that could get... It could get ugly.
It could get a bit of a spike and a bit of a boost and a bounce in the next few weeks because they're not far away with their performance. So, you know, I know Josh a little bit and Josh will give them some energy and some freshness. But then there'll come a time where we'll see we're getting closer to the end, eight weeks to go. Where's my role in the future?
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