Voss Has His Say, But This Old Bloke Still Wants Answers

Four months out the door and Michael Voss is suddenly the go-to bloke for an assessment of Carlton’s finals hopes, which strikes me as a funny old state of affairs for a football club to find itself in. But here we are, and I suppose the man’s entitled to an opinion given he bled for the navy blue longer than most of us have been paying VFL membership.

I’ll say this much for Vossy — he never once, in all his time in the chair, looked like he stopped caring about this football club. That counts for something in my book, even if the results down the stretch didn’t always match the sentiment. So when he comes out and gives his read on this turnaround the Blues have managed, I’m inclined to at least sit up and listen, even if half of me wants to ask why he’s the one being asked and not whoever’s currently holding the clipboard.

The Turnaround Nobody Saw Coming

Let’s not pretend this hasn’t been a strange old year at Ikon Park. We had the pundits writing us off around the bye, the talkback lines running hot with blokes wanting blood, and now suddenly we’re back in the mix for September with a straight face. I’ve been watching this footy club since the days when you could stand on the outer at Princes Park for the price of a meat pie and a squiz at the reserves beforehand, and I can tell you turnarounds like this don’t happen by accident — somebody in that group found something, whether it was steel, structure or just blind stubbornness.

Voss reckons the improvement is real, not a mirage built on a soft draw, and for once I’m not going to argue with the fella. The Blues have found a way to grind out the close ones, which is a skill this club has lacked more often than I care to remember over the last decade or so. Back in my day a four-goal deficit at three-quarter time meant you were cactus and everyone knew it — these days the kids seem to have a bit more jam about them when the game’s in the melting pot.

Why His Opinion Still Carries Weight

Some will say it’s rich for a bloke who got the tin tack to be handing out report cards on the group he left behind, and look, there’s an argument there. But I’d rather hear from someone who knows the players, knows the game plan he built and can see what’s genuinely changed versus what’s just a good run of form and a kind fixture. Voss isn’t some ex-coach with an axe to grind doing the media rounds for a cheap headline — he’s spoken measured, which is more than I can say for some of the pub experts I share a bar with on a Saturday arvo.

What struck me most is he didn’t oversell it. No wild claims about premiership windows or destiny, just a fairly sober take that this list has the talent to matter in September if the pieces stay healthy and the midfield brigade keeps winning its own footy. That’s about as measured an assessment as you’re going to get from a man who’s still, in my view, owed a bit more gratitude from this club than he’s been given.

The Midfield Question That Won’t Go Away

Now here’s where I’ll have my grumble, because someone has to. This club’s finals hopes, whatever Voss or anyone else says, live and die on whether our onballers can control the contest against the genuine top-eight outfits, not just feast on the sides going nowhere. We’ve seen it time and again — brilliant against the strugglers, then a bit soft in the guts when a genuine contender leans on us at the coalface. If we’re fair dinkum about September, that’s the bit that needs sorting, and no amount of clever assessment from the coaching box changes the fact you’ve still got to win it at ground level.

I don’t need the fancy stats to tell me that either, though I’m sure the number-crunchers up in the box have a spreadsheet on it somewhere. Give me the eye test any day — and the eye test says we’re a different, tougher unit than the one that started the season, but not yet the finished article.

Head Office and the Rule Tinkering Won’t Help Us Either

And while I’m at it, don’t get me started on what head office keeps doing to the game while all this is going on. Every second week there’s some new interpretation on the deliberate rule or the hands-in-the-back caper that changes how a contest actually plays out, and it does this club no favours when we’re trying to build a bit of consistency at the exact moment it matters most. Back in the VFL days you knew what you were getting from the men in white — these days you need a law degree just to work out why a free kick’s gone the other way.

It’s not an excuse, mind you, because good sides adapt regardless of what the rulebook throws at them. But it does make Voss’s job of assessing this list a fair bit trickier than it should be, because half the game’s changed shape since he was last in the seat.

What It Actually Means for September

So where does that leave us? Cautiously optomistic, if I’m honest, which is not a phrase I use lightly about this football club after the years we’ve had. Voss’s assessment lines up with what most sensible judges are saying — the top-line talent is there, the improvement under pressure is genuine, but the margin for error against the true contenders is still thinner than we’d like.

• The Blues have shown they can win the close ones, which they couldn’t reliably do twelve months back.
• The midfield still needs to prove it against the best three or four sides, not just the battlers.
• Health of the key posts through September will decide more than any tactical tweak.

If we get there with our best twenty-two on the track and the ball movement humming the way it has these last two months, I reckon we’re a genuine danger to anyone. If we don’t, well, we’ll have plenty of time over the summer to argue about whose fault that was — and knowing this club, we will.

The Long and Short of It

Whatever you think about the timing or the optics of an ex-coach fronting up to talk finals for a club that moved on from him, I’ll take a considered assessment from Michael Voss over another round of talkback hysteria any day of the week. He built plenty of what we’re seeing now, whether the current voices want to admit that or not, and his read on this side’s finals credentials is about as sound as you’ll get from anyone outside the four walls.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a granny final replay from ’95 to rewatch, purely for research purposes.