New coach, new players, a new administration and a new board structure. It was only a matter of time before Carlton announced a new major sponsor.
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The Blues have unveiled CareerOne as a key backer of the club, joining car giant Hyundai. That rising star Patrick Cripps was on Tuesday sent directly from a meeting with his new coach, Brendan Bolton, to a photo shoot with the new sponsor says much about where the Blues are at.
If there is one glaring truth about Carlton, it's that the 2016 version will be barely recognisable from the 2015 one.
More than half of the club's playing list has been culled, but the changes don't stop there. In the past 14 months, more than a third of Carlton's administrative staff have been replaced or moved on by chief executive Steven Trigg. The only member of Carlton's coaching team to survive the clean-out is assistant John Barker. Not even the board is unscathed. From 13 members just two seasons ago, the Blues board will be cut to eight next month.
The irony that the new sponsor is a key player in the jobs market was lost on no-one at Visy Park this week. "They are getting a return on investment already," quipped one club insider.
"I doubt if any AFL club has gone through as much fundamental change as what we have done in the past 14 months," says Trigg, who is one of they architects of the new Carlton, along with president Mark LoGiudice. "I don't wear it as a badge of honour, but the fact is we have moved on or changed more than a third of the staff in a 14-month period. We have made massive changes to the board, staff, management, players and the football department. When you look at the senior coach, assistant coaches, development coaches, and high-performance coaches, the only remaining individual is John Barker. It feels like a complete reset."
It's a reset the club needed. The Blues finished last in 2015, with just four wins. They have been handed a dire draw by the AFL in 2016, with no Friday night fixtures, and will record a $2 million financial loss when the books are finalised. The club's debt level of $5 million remains an issue. To cap it off, whispers of a challenge to the board from some high-profile Blues supporters has swept the marbled corridors of Collins Street.
Historically, it's about this time that Carlton would open the chequebook and sign a new messiah, but a combination of league rules and the $5 million of debt have conspired to rule out that option.
According to Trigg, the only way out of this hole is hard work. "Like anything in this industry and anything in a successful business it's about leadership," he says. "Our president is doing a great job of reshaping the board and bringing to it a more appropriate number and a more aligned skill set in terms of what we need. That's the same for every part of the club. Corporate, membership, brand and marketing, a new CFO, a new head of risk management and strategy. Everywhere we have made change."
When Trigg arrived as CEO of the Blues, he emailed the club's entire membership base and asked what they would do if they were CEO for a day. He received more than 3000 responses and read them all. "About one-third said the same thing. No more quick fixes, no more white knights, no more tricking ourselves we can sign a messiah. In this day and age, you have to build something. Our members get it. Now we face the last piece to the puzzle, and that is getting the draft right."
