David O’Callaghan – BigFooty moderator Gone Critical – gives his view of the Malthouse departure.
Adapted by the author from a post in the Malthouse Sacked discussion thread.
The Board at Carlton can be accused of a number of collective sins in recent years. One terrible choice in hindsight was the appointment of Mick Malthouse as senior coach.
The choice became a terrible one because Mick had gone from being an excellent focused coach to a poor imitation of himself in the job for all the wrong reasons. This probably occurred before his appointment so you wonder about the due diligence of the board. There were enough clues provided by the acrimony of his departure from Collingwood to at least raise questions for the Carlton board. Further evidence was provided by his ongoing battle with Collingwood and Eddie MaGuire conducted through his media role in the following 12 months. You wonder whether the board considered this in the appointment.
Where once the football team was all and players gave their heart and soul for him, the Carlton Malthouse seemed distracted.
His family and the strain coaching placed on them was a constant theme. Early days he revealed his family thought he was through with coaching after Collingwood and had become bitter and “disappointed with humanity” during that departure. The low point came when he complained his 5 year old grandson couldn’t go to the footy like thousands of other kids because he was afraid Pa would be booed on the big screen. Did he just make that up? How many 5 year olds go to the night footy? The coaches images are not up on the big screen at the footy , that’s on Channel 7 at home. More recently his wife was dragged into it when he revealed she was at home crying 3 times a week because of the media attention he was getting.
His unhealthy obsession with Collingwood players. This year he complained Luke Ball and Lumumba were not keeping in contact. He wished Neon Leon hadn’t been dropped for the Grand Final replay. Mick you dropped him, how about sticking solid with your match committee decision and Tyson Goldsack. He wished Heath Shaw was at Carlton. All totally inappropriate statements to be coming from the Carlton coach. Mick didn’t have the players ready to give their all because it was pretty apparent even from the outside he wasn’t completely committed to Carlton. A big difference from his 3 previous coaching stints.
This would have been further magnified with his claims he wasn’t concerned about his own future when lobbying for a new contract. His main concern was his assistants and the distraction to the players. Was it a coincidence he would be the beneficiary of their distractions being allayed?
His cynical engineering of his departure from Carlton with the SEN interview. Although he would have us believe he was only concerned about the players he was happy to dump on their ex-team mate Eddie Betts to get his outcome.As Jason Cloke, Dane Swan Chris Tarrant and others know, Mick has never been shy about putting a player under the bus when things are going badly for him.
Mick came to Carlton on the big bucks. It was the coaching equivalent of Chris Judd arriving at your club. He was backing himself as the best. He failed big time and left with little dignity or grace after 30 years in the game. He was never immune to criticising Waite and others for leaving yet has sacked many, many players and staff in the past who never got the go he did.
When he left, after all he had achieved, been given and been lauded for he had an obligation to go with a little more class.
As it turns out I reckon Carlton are better off without him.
