Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I'm Gerard Waitley. Here's a snapshot of Wednesday, April 22. Ken Hinckley took on the task of the early season board meeting at Carlton.
It's a really interesting one, this one, for Michael.
Chapter 2: What challenges does Ken Hinkley face in the early season board meeting?
And, you know, without pretending to know exactly what's going on at the club, there's some things that Michael needs to have answers to in this board presentation. I don't think there's any doubt at all that this is not the easiest presentation, but we need to set some... For Michael, he needs to get as many answers himself, I would have thought, as do the board.
So I don't think this is just a one-way conversation. I think this is a grown-up conversation at round six, which sounds pretty early, but that's the facts. You know, Michael can point to and he'll walk in and point to the performance of the team. And they have led... They've led for the longest part of the games, the third best team in the competition, which sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?
One and two are Sydney and Fremantle, and then Carlton, who have led for 62% of their games. And he's going to walk into that board meeting and say, listen, our best is good enough, but it tends to run out at three-quarter time. And his job is to try and solve the fourth quarter challenge for them and for the board. They're clearly struggling in fourth quarters.
He can't go in there and not talk about that. Again, when you're telling a story, you've got to use enough truth. You've got to use enough courage to back in your forecasting. And then you've just got to be strong in your beliefs of what your team can do. So he's walked in and says, look, we're struggling in fourth quarters, but we are playing good enough footy.
that we are leading a lot of games for a long period of time, but we are not winning. So no matter what he says other than that, the board is sitting there going, but we're not winning. The members are sitting there going, but we're not winning. So that's a little bit of fact that he can lean into a little bit to promote his game style, to promote the situation they're in.
But they'll use that on the opposite. They'll use that as a, well, yes, we are playing well enough. And yes, we are good enough to lead for large periods of games. Why haven't we finished? That's when Michael's left the room. That'll be their conversation. So he'll talk around struggling around fourth quarters. He'll talk around how good they've been in early parts of games.
He's then going to move into, I would move into some, what's the goal here? What's the goal for us as a football club from this part of the season onwards? So he needs some clarity around what he's trying to achieve. Sorry, if he's trying to achieve something. And I think that's the challenge for Michael. What is the goal he bought?
He needs to ask questions back of them and to find out what they expect from him. And they might not be able to give him the correct answer. but you're the coach, you've got to ask that question. You've definitely got to ask that question and you've got to go and ask a direct question around your future.
And then Kenny entered the guise of Ross Lyon.
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Chapter 3: How is Carlton addressing their fourth quarter struggles?
There's no doubt, Gerard.
Phil Davis on the league's big picture challenge of mental health.
Unfortunately, we've seen suicide, there are divorces, there's financial distress, there's mental health issues. All these things that we're seeing across the plethora of players at the moment. And if we come back to mental health, which to me is probably the number one, we go, well, what are the systems in place?
Yep, every club has two PDMs, one in charge of sort of like the indigenous part of the program, the other broadly. And then we also generally have a psychologist. If you look at what's on their remit, two PDMs, play development managers, sorry, just doesn't get it done with what's required.
If you want to incorporate mental health and making sure players are attuned to that, it doesn't seem like it's cutting it. And then I think, what about our psychology programs? Yep, largely performance psychologists, Jared, inside AFL clubs, not so much the broader piece. And yes, they can touch and they can cross over, but there's some work.
Like personally, when I played, I had the performance psych at the club and then I had my own psych outside of that. And that's sort of how I positioned myself. And I think, as I said, if you then look at that and you go, okay, well, have the AFL put in a structure in every club to give every club the best chance, every player the best chance to handle what I think increasing demands.
If you think about level of scrutiny, like, I think there's like, I don't know, this is going to be, I'm going to get well wrong and everyone's going to yell at me, but somewhere between 10 and 20 footy shows now a week, Jared, there's There are more journalists associated with the AFL than the government, from what I've been told.
And then you've got social media now, from Instagram to Twitter to TikTok. It's all encompassing. So I think if you think about the strain on the players, I don't think we've got the structure right. And then B, the governance, like... Yeah, it's all well and good to have these play development managers and the like and Sykes, but where's the accountability of what's being done?
Like, where's the plan? Where's the action plan that gets followed and we have some governance around it to ensure that we're checking and ticking off that things are being done? So I think as we summarize it there, Jared, I think about it's like, A, let's look after Elijah. He needs some support. Secondly, let's dig into Carlton's oversight.
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