WHEN Michael Voss stepped into the Carlton Football Club a year ago last Friday, he knew there was plenty of work to do.
With a new President and CEO, no remaining assistant coaches, a playing group he only knew from the outside and formulating a game plan from scratch among his remit, it’s clear to see why Voss recently said it’s been all systems go since 23 September last year.
While he constantly stated that 2022 would be a transformational one, he immediately turned his attention to what 2023 would look like upon the completion of the home-and-away season.
And after setting the foundation in the season just gone, he said 2023 presented a whole new and exciting challenge: an excitement he hopes radiates throughout the playing group.
“It’s hard to go right back to 24 September where it all started,” Voss said recently.
“It’s going to be a lot different! We hope that’s clearly for the better, and I hope [the players] are equally as excited as well.
“When a new coach comes in with a new team, it’s fresh and new and different. But I hope that excitement is born by what’s ahead of us, the journey ahead of us and what we’ve got to look forward to.”
Put simply, for Voss, the Blues aren’t going to be at square one on day one.
“I think back to some of the first sessions we had: we had no game plan, nobody knew the program, no one was too sure of the direction we wanted to take our culture,” he said.
“We all have a firm idea of what that actually looks like, and we’re going to keep tinkering with that to make it better. Certainly the nucleus of it is there and the core is there: it’s something to build off, for sure.”
It’s quite easy in the footballing landscape to get lost in the day to day of it all and lose sight of the bigger picture — the end game.
When Voss was appointed, he spoke of his football fundamentals. Among those were attacking the contest, establishing a powerful brand, competitive instincts and embracing the collective over the individual.
But right among that was the connection amongst the football department, from players to coaches to staff: it was this area in particular where Voss said clear inroads had been made.
“We definitely saw that. We tipped a lot of energy into each other, and whether it’s built off something that’s been experienced in the past, I can’t speak to that,” he said.
“But what I can say is they really committed themselves into each other and in the way we wanted to be able to play. I’m hoping that one of the things our supporters saw was a connected footy team that played a selfless brand of football.
“We always want to be better, but the progression we made in that area alone has been significant.”
