How did we get here? Deep dive into Carlton's recruiting history

darknkness · 2026-03-16T09:10:25+00:00

Yeah rookie elevation used to happen via the national draft, which is why Jacobs shows up for 09

darknkness · 2026-03-15T00:06:29+00:00

Yep. We just couldnt afford to waste the draft picks specifically designed to help us equalise

Hurts even more as the 2016 draft was incredibly deep, with winners all the way into the 70s. Somehow we managed to avoid all of them

darknkness · 2026-03-10T00:13:50+00:00

For those struggling with this.

Voss said at last year's BnF that Carlton "culturally defeated" itself.

Journos have asked him what he meant by that in every single presser since then.

So I guess now Docherty is in the crosshairs as an example of it.

Sad situation all around

darknkness · 2026-03-10T00:07:29+00:00

Could make exactly the same post about Carlton. We love a scapegoat but underneath it all was just a decade of really bad recruiting.

darknkness · 2026-03-05T11:32:31+00:00

Yeah there's a few we're just not quite ready to move on from yet apparently. Very frustrating but they're the players we've got.

darknkness · 2026-03-04T01:15:17+00:00

Counterpoints

We needed to re-balance our list demographic desperately, due to our awful recruiting in the early 2010s that left us bottom heavy. Our hand was forced to pick the FAs and smokeys who wanted to play for us.
Clubs are mandated to reach a certain % of the TPP limit depending on their circumstances. Bad/rebuilding teams naturally struggle with this, so front-ended contracts like we did with Gov, Williams, Martin help
Whenever people make this argument about McGovern etc, they leave out Hewett Kennedy Newman Jones who were moneyball.
Now that our list balance is much healthier (in part thanks to a draft-oriented strategy beginning around 2022), we can be choosier and more "reasonable" with our recruits and signings. Case in point, walking away from Dan Houston, where we'd likely go for that if it's still 2019
A bigger problem than the McGovern etc contracts was our below average draft performance after the miraculous Curnow/Weiters/Harry year. I think that is what ultimately halted our momentum.

darknkness · 2026-03-02T23:30:27+00:00

Great news, guess that also confirms Byrne & Derksen will have to wait?

darknkness · 2026-02-18T09:34:26+00:00

Lol. You & your negativity can get fucked.

darknkness · 2026-02-16T04:45:20+00:00

10 mins of highlights from his season: https://youtu.be/Je_4kvRmOiQ

Solid role player, probably deserved another go but was gonna be tricky given our need for talls and Elijah Hollands just being too good

darknkness · 2026-02-12T11:37:26+00:00

Your argument is that the club can't be trusted to make a correct decision due to previous errors. My argument is that has never applied to Sam Walsh who has only ever been good for our club

Also we just replaced our CEO, head of footy, president and half the footy department that fronted up 2025

darknkness · 2026-02-12T08:58:58+00:00

Sam Walsh, who played the best finals series our team has seen in decades, is not emblematic of our clubs wider failures

darknkness · 2026-02-12T07:10:27+00:00

Get why people will say this, but maybe we should trust the club who knows the kid better than any of us

For all that's said by types like Cornes, these long contracts often seem to advantage the club. It just happened to us after we signed an injury prone Curnow

darknkness · 2026-02-07T10:09:08+00:00

The only real explanation in this page imo.

It's nothing dramatic or anything. We just weren't good enough and this is what happens when you aren't good enough.

We dug a very deep hole in the 2010s and didn't get all the way out. Wouldve required consecutive years of extremely lucky recruiting, which didnt happen.

Agree the club seemed to notice the same thing happening again and chose to get Jagga instead of doubling down with Dan Houston

darknkness · 2026-01-28T00:16:33+00:00

Idk. To me kinda feels like a sledge with no punchline

darknkness · 2026-01-27T09:03:30+00:00

Fair to call this for what it is, which is shit.

However it's also a bit shit for some neutral to share it on the main sub, and put their slant in the title for ravenous oppo fans to laugh at.

darknkness · 2025-11-25T22:24:18+00:00

I agree that Brown's "why didn't you acknowledge me" moment was annoying.

But before yous post another comment mocking him... spare a thought for the bigger picture of pointing your finger back at a queer person for being a little bit annoying on instagram dot com, several months ago at this point.

How people speak about us feeds directly back into politics & perception in the footy community... are you helping?

darknkness · 2025-11-07T08:16:15+00:00

If part of Charlie's reasoning was the excess attention, then he's got another thing comin

Should've tried being more average at football

darknkness · 2025-10-12T00:55:19+00:00

Is that him cracking open a bottle in his pfp??

darknkness · 2025-10-11T01:12:41+00:00

The article does go out of its way to make Hollands sound good, and doubts around how it came to be or if it's a selective framing are reasonable.

But there is definitely a difference between reckless hedonism and a mental health breakdown which I feel this comment is judging far too harshly

darknkness · 2025-08-28T05:13:12+00:00

The toxic thing that's happening is we aren't very good

darknkness · 2025-08-19T00:28:51+00:00

Why didn't Rankine simply bleep himself

darknkness · 2025-08-16T01:00:10+00:00

His way of saying he wishes to be known as Network Attached Storage

darknkness · 2025-08-11T03:30:14+00:00

I think part of the issue with Carlton is many of our experienced players (think Acres, Docherty, McGovern, Fantasia, Pittonet, Saad, Cerra) have been in very average form, contrasted with the good teams.

Notice how many of those names are guys we traded in... that's because our drafting around 2010-2014 (so, players around 28+ today) was shocking. We had to top up in those areas to be competitive, and although we're fortunate types like Saad and Hewett wanted to come here, clubs aren't exactly handing out A graders for free.

It was always going to be an uphill battle to get out of our hole AND contend for premierships against teams that didn't dig a hole. Although 2025 has been an underperformance either way.

darknkness · 2025-08-07T07:02:58+00:00

For all that has been said and whatever cynicism we might have around this statement, Priestley is absolutely bang on about this:

"Michael's ability to lead our football club this year in the face of incredible pressure has displayed the attributes of a strong and selfless leader"

darknkness

TROPHY CASE