Coach Michael Voss

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Dear Aph,

As a valued member, I am delighted to officially announce the appointment of Michael Voss as our new AFL Senior Coach.

With an extensive coaching career spanning 12 years across the Brisbane and Port Adelaide football clubs, and after a distinguished 15-year career as a player, I’m proud to let our members know that he has signed on to lead the Blues for at least the next three seasons.

Becoming our 35th AFL Senior Coach, Michael steps into the role after a thorough selection process driven by our new Director of Football Greg Williams, alongside fellow Directors Tim Lincoln and Patty Kinnersly, three-time premiership coach David Parkin and Head of Football Brad Lloyd.

This appointment marks a significant moment in the path forward for our football club.

We couldn’t be happier as a Board and a football club to officially announce Michael as our AFL Senior Coach.

After a thorough and considered selection process, Michael’s credentials and vast experience in football made him the right person for the job.

Of the short-listed candidates whittled down from an early list of more than ten potentials for the role, Michael has been deemed the best fit for Carlton by our club’s coaching subcommittee and newly appointed CEO Brian Cook, who consulted with the panel and took part in the final interview stages of the process.

The final four candidates presented and interviewed extremely well, each demonstrating strong game plan and strategic knowledge with an emphasis on offence, defence, contest, pressure and structure.

Michael demonstrated a strong understanding of the key fundamental requirements for Carlton right now: inspirational and accountable leadership, driver of a united and ambitious culture, builder of trusting and collaborative relationships and a deep and genuine desire to deliver strong on-field performance.

With Michael, we are getting someone who knows exactly what it takes to achieve high performance — which is consistently winning games of football, to provide the opportunity to compete in September and ultimately win premierships. He has experienced the ultimate triumph as a captain, he’s played a big role in driving success as an assistant coach and it’s where we want to get to at this football club.

We know that we have a highly talented, versatile playing group and we firmly believe that Michael is the person to get the most out of our players as people and as athletes.

We are looking forward to each of them getting to work with Michael, as well as his new assistant coaching staff, and we are excited to begin this next reset phase together with the entire Carlton family, starting with pre-season in November.

Inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame in 2011, Michael’s contribution to the game sees him a true champion of the modern era, with a resume that boasts the AFL’s most notable achievements as a five-time All Australian – twice selected as skipper – a Brownlow Medallist and a three-time premiership captain.

Captaining the Lions to three consecutive premierships from 2001–2003 and a fourth Grand Final appearance in 2004, Michael’s leadership on the field had him destined to join the coaching ranks following his retirement in 2006.

Hanging up his boots after 289 senior games, Michael went on to become the successor of AFL Legend and his former coach Leigh Matthews, taking the reins at the Brisbane Lions ahead of the 2009 season.

Following five years at the helm, Michael departed the Club at the end of 2013 and secured a role at Port Adelaide 12 months later to oversee its midfield, playing an instrumental role in the Power’s increasing dominance as senior assistant coach under Ken Hinkley.

Revered across the AFL industry for his ability to build strong relationships and help his players realise their full potential while instilling a high-performing culture, made the 46-year-old the standout candidate to take the reins of the Navy Blues.

Please join me in welcoming Michael, his partner Donna, and their children, Casey, Kayla and Gemma to the Blues.



Luke Sayers
President
Member ID: 2908822
 
Of all the “options” we had, this makes the most sense.
A champion of the game that has been in the biz a very long time. Tried at the highest level, “failed”, went back to learn, grow and come back with a hunger I am sure is unquantifiable.
A proven leader who I hope will take the boys and turn them into men.
We have the cattle,
Go blues
 
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As I said yesterday, this genuinely warms my heart seeing someone be so persistent and finally getting rewarded.

I know a lot of my fellow Blues are left a little underwhelmed by this news after having the "sexier" names like Clarko and Lyon thrown around, however, this man is a legend of our beautiful sport and obviously is as strong mentally as they come to fail how he did and get back up again the hard way.

We have your back, Vossy. Go on you good thing.

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Voss and Craig McRae are best mates, and now they'll be head coaches for the biggest rivalry in footy.
 
Very excited. Surround Michael with the right coaches and back him in ffs.

In case it was missed and to get it early in this thread. This was posted on our board on Tuesday.


PattyKwasagun said:
Hi all - hope you don't mind the visit. Just been reading a few Voss-related comments in one of your other threads and thought you may appreciate a little background from that time. Apologies for the length of this post in advance.

Voss is often blamed for three major problems - the Fev trade (and the general 2009 off-season of bringing in mature-aged players), the exodus of young players, and the state he left the club in. None of these are fair to pin on him.

1. A quick look at the Lions list from 2009 is pretty grim reading. It was an unusual mix of premiership players in their late 20s/early 30s, a few young guns from the previous two or three drafts, and then a bulk of average early/mid 20s players who we had recruited through the middle/latter stages of the draft around our successful years (Justin Sherman, Matt Austin, Jason Roe, Scott Harding, Sam Sheldon, James Hawksley, Rhan Hooper & Cheynee Stiller all played in our final against you that year, which says it all). In hindsight, there just wasn't a heap of talent on that list. To get us to the finals in 2009 was an extraordinary achievement, and quite clearly was the ceiling of what that group was capable of.

However, some at the club who had grown used to success drastically misread the situation and thought it was the heralding of another premiership run. There was also a sentiment that we should strike while the iron was hot with Brown, Black, and Power specifically still there (a bit similar to the rhetoric about Richmond having a proper crack while Dusty's still there before rebuilding).

It's hard to ascertain exactly what Voss believed concerning this approach, but what is clear is that he wasn't running the show. That was Gubby Allan, who as other posters have suggested has messed up more than one club. Allan had been at the Lions since the beginning with Leigh, so was a much more established & senior figure than Voss at that time. Gubby pulled the strings and made the moves. That's not to suggest Voss was entirely against it at all, but it is common knowledge up here that he was not the ringleader.

All of that aside, that trade period wasn't as bad as is often suggested. The Rischitelli/Bradshaw situation is often spoken about as a clear way that Voss damaged the list, but it was common knowledge that Rischa had planned to move to the Gold Coast the following year and that Bradshaw didn't have much left in him. So entertaining those moves made at least some degree of sense, and was hardly the devastating blow it is sometimes portrayed as. Bringing in Matt Maguire and Brent Staker proved good moves for what we paid - they both went on to play quite a bit of good footy for the club. Amon Buchanan & Xavier Clarke were clearly misfires. As for Fev, I think that was just the hope of trying to turn that list into a premiership team while those stars were still around. Everything fell apart, but this idea that it wasn't going to fall apart without that trade period is just a myth. The list was a mess. That trade period only exposed that as being the situation, rather than creating it.

2. As some others have mentioned, the go-home 5 had little to do with Voss - in fact, 4 of those 5 were quite close to him, and 2 have openly said they would likely have stayed at the club if Voss had been kept on. Their departure was entirely linked to how drastically we had fallen apart off-field, and how toxic our culture was. We had an inexperienced CEO & Chairman, essentially no player welfare department, and as brilliant a man as he is, Jonathan Brown as captain was still running an old macho-style form of leadership that wasn't resonating with many of the younger players at all.

Sure, Voss as the senior coach is ultimately responsible for the culture. But the lack of funding and focus the club had given to these areas was remarkable. Combined with the poor state the list was in, I don't think there is a coach out there who could've done much with where we were. Despite all of that, we did win 10 games in Voss's last two seasons (which, again, when you look at our list, was quite remarkable), and nearly snuck into the finals through the Essendon-assisted 9th spot your lot took in his last year in 2013 (albeit with him already sacked a month or so before that).

Hilariously, the reason the board ultimately sacked him was because our Chairman at the time (Angus Johnston) believed he could get Paul Roos to do a Fitzroy kind of homecoming, when Roos had already committed to Melbourne behind the scenes. There is a story to be written about how incompetently that was handled that many close to the situation know well, and it paints Voss in a much kinder light. Our leadership at the time was Johnston - a deeply unpopular and inexperienced businessman who overstepped his mark a number of times - and Malcolm Holmes as our CEO, who had come direct from rugby & racing in NZ and had no AFL background at all.

We essentially weren't a football club in those days.

The vast majority of players who played under Voss raved about him. He was young, inexperienced, and completely in over his head with no quality support anywhere in the club, but not incompetent in any way. This leads to my next point...

3. It has been a common myth that Voss left the Lions in a state of disaster. In reality, he was doing his best to patch up a sinking ship. The results under Leppitsch in the following seasons prove this. We dropped from 10 wins in 2012 & 2013 to 7 in 2014, 4 in 2015, and 3 in 2016.

Leppitsch is a coach I would not recommend to any club again. He was deeply flawed as a senior coach, and created some pretty enormous cultural problems that led to the horrifying season that was 2016. If there is anything good that Leppitsch did for us, it was that he made the club so bad that the AFL had to intervene and sent Noble & Fagan to us. We will always owe him that. But Leppa's time as senior coach - with more resources, much better leadership and support, and arguably a better list - shows just how good a job Voss actually did in hindsight to create a team as functional as he did.

All in all, Voss did plenty right in his time up here, but ultimately was hampered by his inexperience as well as a club that had grown arrogant & stale from its successes, and as a result, had let its list stagnate horribly and dropped the ball in a very big way in its leadership and culture.

I think you'll find plenty of Lions fans who would be very much open to the idea of Voss returning to coach us again one day, due to the common understanding that he didn't get a fair run at it the first time around. Naturally, I can't really see that happening - but it's a nice romantic idea. If you do get him though, I think plenty of you will be surprised at the quality of man & coach you'll be gaining. For all that he's achieved and all that he is capable, it's remarkable how poorly rated he has become. I hope he gets the chance with Carlton to right that wrong.
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Coach Michael Voss

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