Maybe far too much has been expected of this Carlton team. “Expectation is a privilege,” president Luke Sayers said in the wake of Mathieson’s interview. If social media was around when Cook was at Geelong in 2006, it would have been similar – all the pieces are there, so why do we keep being beaten? What is wrong with this place? The coach, the game-plan, even the captain – they’re all in the gun. The online reaction after a loss like Saturday is vicious. They keep turning up but the mood at games oscillates between sullen, cautiously hopeful and irate. Every Blues supporter has been here, and heard it all, before. Yet, in a blink, they forfeited four goals and the game.Ĭarlton people are frustrated. They recovered to win back all the energy of the crowd, the motivation and momentum, and the lead. They delivered a putrid first half where Harry McKay, Jesse Motlop, Sam Walsh and Cripps all ballooned set shots. Instead, on Saturday, they got Marcus Bontempelli and the Western Bulldogs. What Carlton needed was an easy kill, a game off-Broadway. “I don’t think there is a future under this management.” The team, mind you, was still in the eight. On Friday, Australia’s pokies king Bruce Mathieson went nuclear in an extraordinary interview for the Herald Sun.

This week hasn’t been as desolate as that. How do I resist the urge to exit the box, and throttle one of the 60,000 Collingwood supporters celebrating like loons? How, in the name of Jumping Jesaulenko, did my team lose that game? How do I hold it together here, he seemed to be thinking as the Blues slid to a one-point defeat. It was the look of a man doing deep, emotional calculus. In the final two minutes of the Collingwood game in round 23, the look on the face of broadcaster and supporter Andrew Maher was a neat snapshot of the Carlton condition. Their final fortnight of the 2022 season was a textbook study in how a football club can drive a supporter base to the brink. But they’ve since won just eight from 21 games. The captain, Patrick Cripps, was in career-best form and the Blues were a great team to watch. With a slick new regime and a team ready to pop, Carlton were flying at the halfway point last year. “My first focus,” Cook added, “will be on connecting with as many people as possible, and making sure we are aligned on how we are going to push this football club to achieve the success it is striving for.” A few days later, Michael Voss was appointed coach. “This is a significant pillar of the club’s reset strategy,” president Luke Sayers said. The Blues have had more five-year plans than the Soviets, but this felt different.

In the depths of Covid, he took on the Carlton job.

Michael finalshot