Are Bolton's Blues out of clues?

Just when there was a sense things were starting to improve for Carlton, along comes yesterday's humiliating display against North Melbourne to remind everyone of just how dire things are at Princess Park. 

But first, let's get straight to just a couple trends which simply can’t be ignored, followed by something that I – as both a football fan and writer - genuinely, hand to heart, hate doing.

The Carlton Football Club have scored 100 points just once in an astonishing 61 games and won just four of their last 39 matches.

And now for the part that I hate doing: blame everything on the coach.

But I’m blaming everything on the coach.

I am absolutely convinced Brendon Bolton’s ‘watch this space’ routine has come to end.

In Bolton, I see an abandoned local milk bar, with a tacky sign out front, promising exciting times ahead.

The problem is the sign’s been out the front of this shop for nearly four years in what’s increasingly a prime location.

Whenever I walk past the shop and peep through the fading newspaper over the windows, I can’t help but imagine something much more than the continually empty, never delivered on promises, on that annoyingly clichéd sign.

If I squint hard enough I can see a flourishing café with packed tables. I see a fleet of young, cool, tattooed wait staff serving $30 smashed avocado on toast to eager customers. I can see exotic foliage falling from the roof. I can almost hear the chopper’s propellers as it brings in emergency kimchi aioli supplies to appease the masses.

I can see it all so clearly, which only increases my desire to rip away those ridiculous signs and dispose of them (sustainably, of course) because it’s in the inner north of Melbourne where this exciting fantasy is taking place.

To clarify, Brendon Bolton is the ‘watch this space’ sign.

To be brutally honest, I’ve never viewed him as anything other than a ‘watch this space’ sign.

The Carlton Football Club without Brendon Bolton… that’s the imaginary, flourishing café in my mind’s eye.

Carlton’s one win, six loss start to the year means the Blue's season is effectively over, once again, before it’s even begun.

Another pre-season of ‘bound by blue,’ ‘green shoots sprouting’ gobbledygook rhetoric, once again down the Princes Park drain.

Carlton hasn't been awful in 2019. 

Far from it. 

They’ve been in winning positions in most of their losses (with the exception of yesterday's blowout) and in a not-too-crazy world could be hovering around Final's contention. 

But they're of course not, and their second last place on the ladder means they're closer to claiming yet another wooden spoon than they are of getting within a sniff of September action in 2019.

But what if all these near misses and honourable losses weren’t actually a product of their players, but a result of their coach simply failing quite badly at his job?

What if Bolton’s actual tactical prowess simply isn’t up to an (even remotely) acceptable AFL standard? What if the strategic message the former Hawthorn assistant is trying to communicate (I don’t imagine it being too elaborate) isn’t reaching his players in an understandable format?

When Brendon Bolton got the coaching gig at Carlton at the conclusion of 2016 they were the worst team in the competition. Three years later and they’re indisputably still the worst team in the AFL.

How or where Carlton has improved under Bolton is totally non-existent outside of apparently endearing sound bites, that to my ear at least, sound more like a desperate politician, or perhaps an unhinged kindergarten teacher.

The only area Brendon Bolton beats his predecessor, Mick Malthouse, is in cheerfulness, which simply can’t be a high-ranking prerequisite in any other profession than a Hospital Clown.

CARLTON’S WINS BY SEASON UNDER BRENDON BOLTON (Ladder Position)

2016: 7 (14th)
2017: 6 (16th)
2018: 2 (18th)

In Carlton’s 120-year history, they’ve had no less than 23 coaches oversee the club in at least 20 matches. Bolton has quite easily the worst win percentage of this group. He’s won a mere 16 of the 72 matches he’s been in charge of at the Blues (22.2%).

It’s at this point where Bolton defenders bring in the argument concerning their list.

They point to how young and inexperienced the Blues are. 

Age and experience are excuses trotted out only by under-pressure coaches and administrators.

It indeed suits Bolton to continue with the ‘somebody think of the children’ nonsense, because it exonerates him from his principal duty of being an actual, real-life AFL coach. 

For those College Basketball aficionados out there, think John Calipari.

I actually don’t think the Carlton list is so awful.

In Patrick Cripps, they’ve got a legitimate and potential perennial Brownlow hope. Sam Walsh will likely win the Rising Star this season and is the best player to come out of the TAC Cup for years. The mercurial duo of Charlie Curnow and Sam Petrevski-Seton could become anything. Harry McKay has flashed extraordinary potential this season. 

This is a playing list not devoid of talent.

Marc Murphy and Ed Curnow are still productive veterans who would be getting games at most AFL clubs, as too would the evergreen Kade Simpson. Their young forward set up of Mitch McCovern and McKay is as encouraging as it’s been in years and on track for a combined 70 goals in 2019. Former #1 AFL Draft pick Jacob Weitering is not only having his (statistically) best season yet, but is looking particularly strong down back in the process.

It is not the playing list’s fault that they keep losing. The ingredients are there.

The problem is their head chef only knows how to make Two-Minute Noodles.

Brendon Bolton makes for a great assistant. He already has, as Clarkson’s chief helper during their AFL Premiership Three-Peat.

But, as Brendon McCartney proved at the Bulldogs, revered assistants don’t always make good head coaches, and, like the Bulldogs, perhaps Carlton are simply now waiting for a real coach to step in, seize control and take them in a genuinely exciting direction.

When clubs struggle amid winless starts, there exists an overarching narrative that the team’s players are letting down the coach.

In this case we have the opposite.

Brendon Bolton is seriously letting down the Carlton Football Club. 

Is he the right man for the job?

See what Stats Insider's Sackometer says about Brendon Bolton:

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