Blues leaders kick coaches out and hold their own review
Carlton captain Patrick Cripps kicked the coaches out of the room at the end of Tuesday's post mortem of the weekend’s horrible loss to Greater Western Sydney and held an impromptu and unsparing player-only review of the disastrous performance.
As Brendon Bolton and his coaches finished the forensic review of Sunday’s game, Cripps stood up and took over. He asked all of the coaches to leave the room. The real review was only just beginning.
Led by Cripps, the players then went through, and gave brutally honest peer-to-peer feedback, player by player. The honesty session was not run by a leadership consultancy but was Cripps and Sam Docherty's idea as the co-captains sought to take player ownership of the performance.
Young Carlton forward Harry McKay said "honest feedback" and "looking guys in the eye" were part of the tough review.
McKay was half an hour late to his scheduled media conference on Tuesday, because the review went longer than planned.
"There was some really honest feedback from everyone, obviously the weekend was super disappointing," McKay said.
"There were some challenging things said and we need to bounce back this week. [The review] was driven from 'Crippa' and 'Doc', but the whole playing group bought in and that's what it has to be, it can't just be one or two people.
"When you don't bring effort and the competing isn't strong, that's what you really have to challenge.
"Sometimes when you have some really close losses and you play some good footy it's more system-based, but this is really looking guys in the eye and talking about the effort side of things, and that has to be there every week."
The defence was undermanned and the midfield's youth and inexperience was exposed when Cripps was blanketed, a move that only further illustrated the burden he was carrying in the team.
Murphy suffered several cracked ribs in a heavy collision with Giants ruck Shane Mumford that was cleared by the match review officer.
Football manager Brad Lloyd had spoken ahead of that MRO decision on Monday and said he wanted that sort of aggression in the game. Implicitly he noted its absence in Carlton’s game, magnified by the fact that no player remonstrated with Mumford for the crude collision.
As reported by The Age earlier this year, Docherty and Cripps had some strong things to say to the playing group after the round-seven thrashing at the hands of North Melbourne.
It worked, it had seemed, when the team bounced back six days later and almost defeated premiership hopefuls Collingwood at the MCG.
But as embattled coach Bolton said on Sunday night, it's one step forward and two steps back for the Blues in 2019.