MICHAEL Voss was able to share some important news with members at the open training session on Saturday.
On the back of their team meeting, Voss declared that they had chosen the leadership group, with co-vice captains and a singular captain leading the Blues in 2022.
“This morning we came out of a meeting where we announced our player leadership group for 2022: we’ve gone with co-vice captains in Jacob Weitering and Sam Walsh, so that’s great news,” Voss announced.
“And our captain for 2022 is Patrick Cripps.”
Amongst the cheers of the members, Voss said this was a natural progression for the trio, who have all been leading the standards at the Club on and off the field.
The process of choosing the leadership group was not one that was taken lightly, with months of cultural training and interviews taking place, getting the vision of the team right before choosing who to help bring that vision to life.
“Obviously one of the big things was hopefully seeing us and the way we want to play: we’ve spent an enormous amount of time in the cultural and leadership space,” he said.
“We’ve been heavily invested in that throughout our pre-season program. The boys have been exceptional in being able to take on what’s needed and I guess at the forefront of that, when we went through the behaviours and what we want to stand for, those three clearly achieved that for us.”
Voss noted that you couldn’t deny that Sam Walsh and Jacob Weitering had demonstrated leadership-like qualities on the field through 2021, and at such a young age, they will be a part of the Club’s fabric for years to come.
“We shouldn’t underestimate that they go about it the right way, they play the right way and the first thing you need as a leader is to get the job done on the grass and all those boys have really led that,” he said.
“‘Weiters’ had an exceptional year down back last year, same with 'Walshy'. He’s still really developing as a leader: when you think about his age, it’s frightening really.
“They’ll develop together and they obviously form a core nucleus at the Carlton Football Club for a long time.”
As for Cripps, Voss told the crowd that Cripps has been clear with his intentions from the moment Voss stepped foot into IKON Park, having a clear vision and a passion for leading his side to better things.
“I think from the very first day, we were a bit apart because of restrictions, [Cripps] was in Western Australia and I was in Victoria. From the first chat, him and 'Doc' had a passion about what they wanted to stand for and they’ve already done a lot at the back end of last year really formulating that,” he said.
“Their vision was really strong and now we have to execute it.
“We’re in a phase where we’re in preparation, and it gives us the best chance to perform but we also know there’s work ahead of us, we’ve got to get the job done and we understand that by the time we get to Round 1, we want to make you guys proud. That’s what we’re aiming for.”
With the AFL side now heading into a five-day break in readiness for the practice match period that's just around the corner, Voss was optimistic that the next stage of pre-season will be match preparation against tough opponents.
"When we come back, we’ll go into full match prep mode to get the guys really fit,” he said.
“We start to put it up against some opposition, we’ve get to test it against some 'oppo' and that’s when we’ll find out some more information about ourselves and what we need to do going forward.”
