Bulldogs Coach Talks Up His Defender, We All Know Why

Every so often a coach fronts the microphones and says a whole lot of words that are really just one word repeated over and over, and that word is ‘don’t’. Don’t come sniffing round my key defender, don’t get any ideas, don’t believe what you’re reading in the papers – and every single time, mark my words, it means the exact opposite is happening behind closed doors.

The presser that wasn’t really about footy at all

The Bulldogs coach stood up this week and did the thing they all do now, the modern media training special, where you praise a bloke to the rafters in a way that somehow also sounds like a farewell speech. He talked about character, about professionalism, about how the club values him enormously and how he’s contracted, thank you very much, so can we all move along. Back in my day a coach would’ve just told you to get stuffed and that would’ve been the end of it, no spin doctors standing off to the side nodding along like it’s a corporate launch.

But you don’t front the cameras unprompted to defend a fella’s spot in the side unless someone’s been ringing your phone. And the someone in question, according to what’s been doing the rounds, is us. Carlton. Again.

Why we keep getting linked to every good key defender in the competition

I’ll admit there’s a version of this where I sound like a broken record, because it feels like every second trade period some Carlton recruiter is apparently on the phone to a rival defender, and half the time it comes to absolutely nothing and the bloke re-signs at his own club for another four years and we all forget it happened. So I’m not about to run down to the club shop and buy a guernsey with his name on the back just yet.

But there’s a reason the speculation keeps landing on this fella specifically, and it isn’t just journos filling column inches in the quiet part of the year. He reads the ball beautifully off half back, he’s strong overhead for a bloke his size, and he doesn’t panic under the high ball the way some of these kids do these days who’ve grown up never having to worry about a genuine third-man-up contest because head office has legislated it out of the game. He plays it like defenders used to play it – get the first genuine contest right, then worry about the rebound.

Plenty of fans reckon the coach doth protest too much, and I reckon they might be onto something.

What Carlton actually needs down back

Now here’s where I’ll get myself in trouble with some of you, because I know half the letters page thinks our defence is sorted and the other half thinks it’s held together with sticky tape and good intentions. The truth, as it usually is, sits somewhere in between. We’ve got talent down there, no argument, but talent isn’t the same as a genuine, battle-hardened, been-there-done-that key defender who can play on the best tall in the comp on a big September afternoon and not blink. We’ve been searching for that bloke, in one form or another, for longer than I care to admit.

So when a name like this gets floated, and it keeps getting floated, you’d want the football department taking it seriously rather than just enjoying the chatter on talkback. This isn’t a luxury signing, this is the sort of player that turns a good defensive unit into one that actually holds up when the heat comes on in the last quarter of a final, which let’s be honest is where we’ve come unstuck plenty of times over the years.

The contract talk that never quite convinces me

The line always trotted out is that he’s contracted for another season or two, as though a contract these days is worth the paper it’s scribbled on. I’ve watched enough of this modern trade period carry-on to know that a contract with a year or two left just means there’s a negotiation still to be had, not that the bloke’s going nowhere. Clubs manage these things quietly, dates get moved around, release clauses appear from nowhere, and by the time it’s all done the coach who stood up and defended him to the media is standing at a press conference six months later wishing him well for the next chapter of his career.

I’m not saying that’s definitely what’s happening here. I’m saying I’ve seen the pattern often enough that I’m not falling for the reassurances on face value.

What footy department blokes tend to do at footy department clubs

The Bulldogs have built something decent down at the Whitten Oval, no argument from me there, and their list management has generally been sharp enough that they don’t let genuine quality slip through the cracks for nothing. So if there is interest, and there does seem to be genuine interest, this won’t be some free-for-all where we just wander in with a modest offer and expect them to roll over. It’ll cost picks, it might cost a promising young player of our own, and the Bulldogs will drive as hard a bargain as anyone in the caper.

That’s fine by me. Good defenders don’t come cheap and they shouldn’t. What annoys me more than the price tag is the dance around it, the pretending that nothing’s going on when everyone from the boundary rider to the bloke selling the meat pies knows exactly what’s going on.

My honest take, for what it’s worth

I reckon the coach’s comments this week tell you everything you need to know without actually telling you anything at all, which is a peculiar skill modern coaches seem to have mastered better than most politicians. If there was nothing in it, you wouldn’t need to say a word. You’d just let the bloke train, play his footy, and let the speculation die of natural causes the way it usually does.

Instead we got a defence of his character, a nod to the contract, and a very pointed non-denial about interest from elsewhere. Read into that what you will. I know what I’m reading into it, and I know what a fair few Carlton members down at the club rooms reckon too.

Whether it actually gets done is another matter entirely, and I’ve been burned by trade-period optimisim before, believe me. But if the boys upstairs are fair dinkum about finally nailing down that key defensive spot for good, this is exactly the sort of bloke worth losing a bit of sleep, and a decent draft pick or two, over.