Coach Michael Voss

[HarryFlashman]

SOS was playing well before he was injured in 2023. Yes, I believe he will get a game if he earns it(as he did last year).
As far as the two Coleman medallists go I think we'd be best to move one of them on. We have a more balanced forward line. We have both Kemp and SOS who should be fine to play there. Kemp's not a backman.

As far as Fog goes he plays an important role and plays it well, we win the vast majority of the games he plays in. He doesn't need to kick more than 40 metres.

You're talking about many moves that were forced by injuries, I don't know how hard it is to acknowledge that.
Do you want to blame Voss for Walsh's injury-affected pre-season and start to the year too?

What were you thinking when we were doing well earlier in the year? I sure didn't see you posting during that period. If you're going to come and get all worked up when we aren't doing well, I'd expect that you show the same passion when we are doing well. I just don't understand it.


In conclusion, he won't be sacked. There is little point in continuing to go back and forth on this now. Cheers,

FYI I’ve been around for a long time, been saying the mid field, game style & selection integrity has been a massive issue for quite sometime.
Wasn’t about to get on board a false dawn.
There’s no point flogging a dead horse, a little success was enough for a lot to start crowing about Voss knowing what he’s doing, a little time and perspective shows that we’ve had problems that haven’t been addressed.

Every Carlton supporter I’ve spoken to, most of the media & anyone with a little footy sense knew we were screwing the pooch on selection - the MC, Voss & a few here were the only ones that couldn’t see the obvious.

 

[SkyhorseTamer]

Many are relics of former administations.

Nope. The majority were brought in after.

 

[HarryFlashman]

Nope. The majority were brought in after.

There’s a peer reviewed comment posted a page or two ago about it
I don’t realize so many were Voss appointments/appointed after he was onboard, adds a different perspective when that’s taken into consideration.

 

[Michael Jezz]

Nope. The majority were brought in after.

Lloyd, Austin and Russel were the Legiodace presidency. My point is Sayers changed the Coach and brought in Cook, most of the rest were carried over

 

[jpfalvo]

I said "apparently", I never said it definite but I think it was from the guys on an IanPrenderCast episode, who followed our coaching process at the time pretty closely. Also I never mentioned sacking half the list so not sure where you've got that from.

One of the prendercasters is close to Kingsley. Thats where its from

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[HarryFlashman]

One of the prendercasters is close to Kingsley. Thats where its from

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It’s also been confirmed from other sources too (to the extent you can source something that’s not first hand)

 

[TENACIOUS]

Voss is a great people manager.

But, there is a reason that he missed out on so many jobs, he lacks pieces of what it is to be a great senior coach…

Great assistant, struggling head coach..

If someone that you have committed long term to is struggling what do you do? You either sack them or put the best people available around them..

Carlton in their great wisdom have re-signed all the assistants for next year, like they did with some under performing players…

At times, it really feels like Carlton don’t care about the on-field any more, they care about money, players don’t play for pride in the jumper & FFS they don’t even build the rivalry up against Collingwood anymore.

 

[slashin_velvet]

Trying to review his time without the emotion of finals etc. Voss has shown he can get the team performing well - we were top 2 from rounds 14 to 20 during the season even with significant injury hurdles early in the season which we overcame, so this was no mean feat. I think he needs better support, but most importantly, he needs continuity of squad.

 

[Blue By Blood]

I’m one of the biggest football nuffies going round. I watch a tonne of football at all levels and live and breath it. But I have to admit that the way we play is really stripping my enjoyment and enthusiasm for footy at the moment.

The game plan which I think is ridiculously bad is on him. How we find ourselves kicking down the line to Corey Durdin with an opposition tall on him time and time again beggars belief. The insistence of playing such a heavily contested style that makes us work so hard for goals whilst the opposition scores so easily is not sustainable. The insistence on slow play and long kicking down the line until we get so far behind and have no choice but to play attacking footy beggars belief. We put teams to the sword when we play the attacking style. Yet we just don’t try it often enough. Coaching instruction or players too afraid to make mistakes I’m not sure.

But those issues aside, what really irks me is the lack of footy IQ shown by the players. You shouldn’t need to be instructed to play the fundamentals. It should come naturally. We try to keep the ball in play rather than take it out of bounds and force the thrown in (see Hollands). We get tackled and drop the ball or tap it loose to open space (where the opposition has the speed advantage) when it would never have been called holding the ball (too many guilty of this). The forwards do not play in front. The talls do not compete in the air. One damn job, bring it to ground. Play with intensity and don’t get out marked. The smalls don’t know how to get front and centre and hit the packs on the move. The defenders (Newman, Williams) have unbelievably bad body work in one-on-one contests and they get out marked far too easily. Williams especially looks lost in defence any time he has to actually defend. The defensive setup is a mess. See Lohmann and Rayner taking uncontested marks because no one was selfless to leave their man and try to spoil. Honestly these are fundamentals and we just either don’t know how to do them, don’t get instructed to do them, refuse to follow instructions, or don’t have the IQ to pull off.

The coach is an issue, yes that’s the side I fall on but I refuse to lay full blame on him. His shortcomings as a coach I believe he can address. The problems run deeper. The supporting coaches are an even bigger issue. Outside of Hansen I think we lag well behind other teams here. The fitness and strength and conditioning regime for various reasons has struggled to keep players on the park. I’m not sure the new guy will be able to work wonders as the players are just simply prone to injury. The players don’t play the fundamentals. There are a few list holes to address that we’ve talked about ad nauseam. The bottom line though is we can’t keep having to work so hard for goals only to concede easy ones. That’s absolutely demoralising as you only have so much energy you can give during a game as a player. The heavy contested style game is outdated and we need to adjust or we’ll stay an 8-5th based team the next two years before fading into another rebuild. It’s been a while since they looked like they’re actually having fun out there. Rant over.

 

[jpfalvo]

Trying to review his time without the emotion of finals etc. Voss has shown he can get the team performing well - we were top 2 from rounds 14 to 20 during the season even with significant injury hurdles early in the season which we overcame, so this was no mean feat. I think he needs better support, but most importantly, he needs continuity of squad.

That top2 spot during most of that period, was more a matter of other teams failing to take the spot from us, as we faltered, than our form warranting it.



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[jpfalvo]

Voss is a great people manager.

But, there is a reason that he missed out on so many jobs, he lacks pieces of what it is to be a great senior coach…

Great assistant, struggling head coach..

If someone that you have committed long term to is struggling what do you do? You either sack them or put the best people available around them..

Carlton in their great wisdom have re-signed all the assistants for next year, like they did with some under performing players…

At times, it really feels like Carlton don’t care about the on-field any more, they care about money, players don’t play for pride in the jumper & FFS they don’t even build the rivalry up against Collingwood anymore.

Assistant cut off was Aug 1st.

Have you got intel that we re-committed to all?

I know Kreuzer is leaving to become a firefighter... so thats 1 to replace

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[blue healer]

Assistant cut off was Aug 1st.

Have you got intel that we re-committed to all?

I know Kreuzer is leaving to become a firefighter... so thats 1 to replace

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I don't understand this Aug 1 cutoff to inform assistant coaches of their future.

What sort of crazy rule means a club must tell someone on Aug 1 that they're not required next season but also have to tell that person how important their contribution is over the next two months as we try to win a flag?

That's pure insanity.

 

[The Blue Weirdo]

3 years at the helm now and it has been nothing short of underwhelming and an outright failure. We've been told that we want to be a consistent home and away team, get busy getting better, all of these words. The truth of the matter is that we are consistently inconsistent. We haven't gotten close to top 2/4 in 3 years (2023 despite finishing 5th we were 10pts behind 4th and 4pts behind 8th). The thing that frustrates me the most is that our best footy is built off momentum and emotion, not system and consistency. Its ALWAYS about us bashing teams in the contest and gaining territory and then everything falls into place from that. It's just too simple and predictable and every team knows how we play. In all 3 seasons we have had winning patches where we look impenetrable, and then falter and get exposed. 2023 was just in inverse order.

And our way of playing matches up with our coach's strengths and weaknesses. Everyone universally knows that Voss excels in leadership, motivation and relationship building. All intangible qualities. However, everyone also universally knows that strategically and tactically he is nothing short of a liability. And these are the EXACT same strengths and weaknesses as his best mate bottom 10 ken. I have never and still don't understand how clubs can appoint SENIOR coaches who have no tactical acumen. I honestly believe Voss has a role in a football department but not as senior coach. His skillset is even more suitable to that of a club psychologist or something like that, due to his supposed exceptional ability to understand people and 'empower' them. But how many times is his tactical ineptitude going to cost us and put us on the back foot.

Voss IS a problem, but the problem I think is bigger than Voss. Our president and board are the ones who made the decisive and consequential error of passing up on Kingsley for this guy. Kingsley, unlike Voss, is a tactical mastermind who is incredibly intelligent, worked at multiple clubs as an assistant coach, as opposed to voss staying at just 1 club, and kingsley also worked on every different line. Voss only controlled midfield and leadership department at port. He never worked in offence/defence which is basically your turnover game, and you've seen that in the way we've played for 3 years. When the biggest strength of a coach is something intangible that should already be a given, there's already alarm bells. That's like saying understanding the law isn't the most important thing for a lawyer.

As for this president of ours, he's been a board member for over 10 years, and he somehow got promoted to president. When we appointed Teague, voss was one of the candidates in line. So what was it that made us think that Voss wasn't good enough at the end of 2019? Or what was it that Voss did in those next 2 years that made us decide to appoint him in 2021? It worries me why no one asks these questions. How can Voss not get past the 1st round of interviews when applying for the Collingwood job, yet somehow be our man? The club appointed voss knowing that tactics was his Achilles heel. And that's what stings. Because they prioritised 'leadership' and 'culture' ahead of strategy and actual tangibles. Kingsley excels in those intangible traits too, but because he is so good at the tangibles, no one has to focus on the 'leadership and culture', they take care of themselves through results and system on the field. Apparently, our board were very impressed with Kingsley and offered him to be voss' assistant. If Kingsley is a better coach than voss which he absolutely is, why wasn't Voss offered to be kingsley's assistant? Sure Voss would've probably rejected, but the principle still stands true. Oh that's right, because Voss the CHAMPION footballer is a more marketable name.

And that's all this club cares about. Marketing. And patting themselves on the back, making it look like they are busy at work when they are all doing bugger all and protecting each other. There is no accountability at our once famous club and I think us fans are a big reason for this, which allows the club to continually get away with their ineptitude. I couldn't believe how so many fans were celebrating and patting each other on the back after we scraped into 8th because another team mopped up our mistakes. And then after the hawks game, you've got Voss saying "oh you don't pass up on these sort of opportunities", referring to needing to win our last 2 games to make finals. What about the opportunity we had to consolidate top 2 and be a bonified contender which our list is. We botched that, but instead of accountability there was a victim mentality and injury excuses, and that is how we lower our standards and fall into mediocrity. Compare that to sam mitchell before the dogs game who says "if we don't win the grand final we're not gonna sit back and say what a success that was". (7 min mark).
This sort of mentality from our club is exactly what has plagued us and killed our standards for far too long, and I can't speak on behalf of every supporter but in my opinion too many of us don't push the club to have the necessary standards that we once had when we were a powerhouse.

And lastly, something I hear too often that irks me is "keep voss but get rid of his assistants". All of these assistants are guys that voss chose to bring in. Hamill, Hansen, Greaves, Jordan russell, clarke, ebert, lonergan, power all joined AFTER voss. So anyone who says we haven't supported voss that is just categorically false. So is the plan just to get tactical gurus around him to do his dirty work, so then we give voss the credit? If you are doing a group project, and one person does all the research, and the other stands in front and presents, and both do a great job, you should both be praised based on the work you done. You wouldn't praise the person who spoke for his research skills, rather, for his fluency and expression. So if we do happen to get smarter people around voss and improve tactically and strategically, we'll know who to give the credit too. People speak about voss as if he's a baby first time coach. He's had senior coaching experience. He then went to port for 8 years to supposedly fix all of his weaknesses. He is what he is. He isn't just going to magically become a master tactician when he's been in the coaching landscape for over 15 years. I really believe we had an exceptional coach in kingsley in the palm of our hands, but due to the higher ups at our club that prospect is well and truly gone, and we are all left to feel the cost of these decisions.

Very astute post.

Are you available to replace Cook, Sayers or Lloyd?

 

[TENACIOUS]

Assistant cut off was Aug 1st.

Have you got intel that we re-committed to all?

I know Kreuzer is leaving to become a firefighter... so thats 1 to replace

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Stamos posted it here

Autopsy - 2024 Elimination Final Blues blown away in first half. Never looked likely.

I understand that but if you look at our turnaround from the Gold Coast game in 2023 up until the Richmond game in 2024 the win loss is 20-6. In smaller samples it was 8-2 in 2022, 11-2 in 2023 and 11-4 in 2024. The inconsistency is baffling. No excuses. The stats are baked in. The...

www.bigfooty.com

 

[Jatz]

Apart from the obvious concern around Vossy's coaching ability, I'm more concerned that our selection panel seemed to either miss his tactical fragilities or saw it and decided it could be overcome.

I don't see the point in sacking him if we still don't seem able to spot candidates with significant weaknesses.

 

[Blue1980]

Voss press conference
Remember we did not contest before he came. No carlton coach has had a better record this century finishing 4th and 8th in consecutive years.

Well Wayne Brittain did that, 3rd 2000 and 6th 2001.

Ratts similar but not a prelim.

I agree that Vossy has done ok, though it’s possible we need someone else to take us to the next step.

At the very least more brainpower needed with the assistants.

 

[Blue1980]

Just listened to Voss press conference again

If he seriously believes what he is saying we are in deep ahit

Second half effort was impressive
We had plans for Zorko Neale but they weren’t executed
TDK could only play a half or not play at all so we played him. Glad we did it could have been worse
Doc was desperate to play
We believe we had the game plan to win. Execution the issue
We are still a work in progress
We had many obstacles to overcome

FFS it’s on repeat every week and nothing changes

To be fair I’m not sure what any coach could have said in the press conference after that loss would have been seen as good.

Are there any supporters of clubs who think their coach does great losing press conferences?

 

[Blue_Fusion]

Voss is a great people manager.

But, there is a reason that he missed out on so many jobs, he lacks pieces of what it is to be a great senior coach…

Great assistant, struggling head coach..

If someone that you have committed long term to is struggling what do you do? You either sack them or put the best people available around them..

Carlton in their great wisdom have re-signed all the assistants for next year, like they did with some under performing players…

At times, it really feels like Carlton don’t care about the on-field any more, they care about money, players don’t play for pride in the jumper & FFS they don’t even build the rivalry up against Collingwood anymore.

This was my concern in 2021... there was a reason Voss was overlooked so many times...

Now I must say, he did start making a believer out of me when for the first time in a very long time, we saw a Carlton side run out there with full buy in...

The second half of this season has pretty much shattered the confidence I had in him now.

I said before the ef that Voss would either look like a genius or an absolute tool... unfortunately, it was the latter and the result was probably the most embarrassing half of footy in VFL/AFL finals history... we couldn't even score a point and our first goal came off the back of a few Lions players making blunders in defence... it was clear at that stage they were mentally checked out because the job was already done.

They should care about on field more than anything - especially if they only care about making money... our record membership numbers this year was off the back of the on field performance in the second half of last year... imagine what a premiership would do...

The problem is, they are very good at sucking the supporters in... they almost find a feel good story every week for the supporters to buy into...

And they protect the players very well... they are all well looked after and that's why no one wants to leave.

Voss will need to process everything that went wrong and get serious. Shop players around that haven't performed or unable to consistently get out on the park. Get the playing group together and hit them with some home truths... whoever gets offended, show them the door and ffs at the very least, superstar or not, when a player is stinking it up drop them. Set some ****ing standards.

If it's more of the same next year, we will have a similar result.

 

[Beyond Blue]

To be fair I’m not sure what any coach could have said in the press conference after that loss would have been seen as good.

Are there any supporters of clubs who think their coach does great losing press conferences?

You are right there isn’t much any coach can say after a bad loss to placate supporters but in this case he gave us an insight into his thinking for this match and a lot of found it to be very scary:
- to say openly that we took TDK into the game knowing he didn’t have the fitness to play the whole game in a final is galling. TDK is either fit enough to play or not. You don’t manage minutes in a final for anyone.
- Also the gushing talk about Doc and his comeback when he was clearly not fit enough to play was like spitting in the face of a guy like Cincotta.
- then to say we had a plan for Zorko that consisted of playing Doc and Fanta on him (when any supporter could tell the most obvious choice was Cincotta) is just comical.

I’ve been happy with Voss on the whole but the decisions he made before and during this game were so bad it really makes you think he has no idea.

 

[jj1978]

You are right there isn’t much any coach can say after a bad loss to placate supporters but in this case he gave us an insight into his thinking for this match and a lot of found it to be very scary:
- to say openly that we took TDK into the game knowing he didn’t have the fitness to play the whole game in a final is galling. TDK is either fit enough to play or not. You don’t manage minutes in a final for anyone.
- Also the gushing talk about Doc and his comeback when he was clearly not fit enough to play was like spitting in the face of a guy like Cincotta.
- then to say we had a plan for Zorko that consisted of playing Doc and Fanta on him (when any supporter could tell the most obvious choice was Cincotta) is just comical.

I’ve been happy with Voss on the whole but the decisions he made before and during this game were so bad it really makes you think he has no idea.

He didn’t read the room very well. At least he’s honest. Tells opposition a week in advance who’s not playing or who is. Great composed speaker. Shame he lacks the tactical nouse.

 

[skadoosh]

I’m one of the biggest football nuffies going round. I watch a tonne of football at all levels and live and breath it. But I have to admit that the way we play is really stripping my enjoyment and enthusiasm for footy at the moment.

The game plan which I think is ridiculously bad is on him. How we find ourselves kicking down the line to Corey Durdin with an opposition tall on him time and time again beggars belief. The insistence of playing such a heavily contested style that makes us work so hard for goals whilst the opposition scores so easily is not sustainable. The insistence on slow play and long kicking down the line until we get so far behind and have no choice but to play attacking footy beggars belief. We put teams to the sword when we play the attacking style. Yet we just don’t try it often enough. Coaching instruction or players too afraid to make mistakes I’m not sure.

But those issues aside, what really irks me is the lack of footy IQ shown by the players. You shouldn’t need to be instructed to play the fundamentals. It should come naturally. We try to keep the ball in play rather than take it out of bounds and force the thrown in (see Hollands). We get tackled and drop the ball or tap it loose to open space (where the opposition has the speed advantage) when it would never have been called holding the ball (too many guilty of this). The forwards do not play in front. The talls do not compete in the air. One damn job, bring it to ground. Play with intensity and don’t get out marked. The smalls don’t know how to get front and centre and hit the packs on the move. The defenders (Newman, Williams) have unbelievably bad body work in one-on-one contests and they get out marked far too easily. Williams especially looks lost in defence any time he has to actually defend. The defensive setup is a mess. See Lohmann and Rayner taking uncontested marks because no one was selfless to leave their man and try to spoil. Honestly these are fundamentals and we just either don’t know how to do them, don’t get instructed to do them, refuse to follow instructions, or don’t have the IQ to pull off.

The coach is an issue, yes that’s the side I fall on but I refuse to lay full blame on him. His shortcomings as a coach I believe he can address. The problems run deeper. The supporting coaches are an even bigger issue. Outside of Hansen I think we lag well behind other teams here. The fitness and strength and conditioning regime for various reasons has struggled to keep players on the park. I’m not sure the new guy will be able to work wonders as the players are just simply prone to injury. The players don’t play the fundamentals. There are a few list holes to address that we’ve talked about ad nauseam. The bottom line though is we can’t keep having to work so hard for goals only to concede easy ones. That’s absolutely demoralising as you only have so much energy you can give during a game as a player. The heavy contested style game is outdated and we need to adjust or we’ll stay an 8-5th based team the next two years before fading into another rebuild. It’s been a while since they looked like they’re actually having fun out there. Rant over.

Footy IQ part hits the nail on the head.

How about Saad making a run from D50 with a man right on his tail.

Our player STILL elects to handball to Saad as he runs by with said opposition putting a huge amount of pressure on the disposal.

This was from the Saints game I'm quite sure - Motlop purposefully tackling a Saints player over the goal line instead of trying to keep him inside the line of play.

Majority of our players, when they have possession, are very poor at evading 1 opposition player. A side step or small change of direction to enable a pass to a free teammate are few and far between. Instead our first instincts is to bang it on the boot.

 

[slashin_velvet]

That top2 spot during most of that period, was more a matter of other teams failing to take the spot from us, as we faltered, than our form warranting it.



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I don't accept that. You might be right that other teams faltered at times, but that's testament to how tough the season was. Facts are that we put ourselves in that position by winning enough games to be 2nd best in the league.

 

[El Topo]

Voss has been surrounded by second raters in all areas of the football, coaching and recruiting department. Many are relics of former administations. I think Voss can coach but he will not last more than 2 seasons, if a vast portion of those under him are not changed out.

Vossy's underlings may be the dregs of who was left in 2021 but they're all his picks. What would any senior head or rising star gain from coming to work under him?

 

[mochacinolatte]

I honestly dont know.

We were humming in the first half.

Wheels fell off in the second half due to injuries.

If we had a healthy list do we finish top 4?

Questionable team selection, was it due personell?

A lot of what ifs.......

 

[bourbons]

Do you think we'll start poorly next season? I don't unless we are decimated by injury in the preseason.

How the hell would anyone know? Thats the main problem.

What I think you can predict is more of the same form fluctuation. We'll probably string together a month or 2 of decent footy at some stage that will have all and sundry talking us up again or saying they've fixed it and will come home strongly, but you can take it to the bank we won't be consistent across the season.

3 years of sample size now.