Buckley's tough assessment of Carlton's season and the changes they must make over summer

Nathan Buckley is not willing to give Carlton a pass on their 2024 season, despite having as many as 20 players on their injury list heading into finals.

The Blues squandered a commanding ladder position to ultimately make up the numbers, conceding the first 60 points in their Elimination Final loss to Brisbane.

Buckley feels Carlton must make sweeping changes to the way they prepare players training wise.

“Physical development and technical development, for me. Physically they lost too many players so it was either overload or underload and I suspect it might have been the latter, it might have been underload,” Buckley told SEN Breakfast.

“It could be both, you have individual programs for players, but I suspect it was unders.

“And the technical is crucial. We’re talking about Hawthorn and how well they do the basics. I just think that Carlton has relied on talent for too long and if you’re going to get synergy and your team to pop, there’s just too many fumbled balls, too many handballs missed and they just need to go back to get those technical basics of the game.

“I’d be focusing heavily on that in the pre-season.”

Buckley isn’t giving Carlton a pass due to their mounting injury issues, saying the club’s downward turn began while the list was healthy.

The Blues sat six points clear second on the ladder and had smashed Geelong and Richmond by 60 points around the bye period, and then led GWS by 39 points in Sydney the next week, before things fell off a cliff. They would lose to the Giants and only beat North Melbourne and West Coast to close the season.

“I think they were trying to pull a rabbit out of the hat (on Saturday night). This wasn’t about a poor Elimination Final or the first half or selection or tactics, it was the fact that they just dropped off a cliff in the last two months,” Buckley said.

“I don’t give them the personnel excuse. I absolutely think they’ve underperformed. I would match their personnel troubles, which got to an extent for a couple of weeks there that would’ve been difficult to handle, but I would match that with what we saw through the back-end of 2023 when at different stages they missed a lot of players over a longer period.

“They were able to build and find their mojo, get back into contention and go into finals and performed more than admirably.

“They weren’t able to find that some synergy and connection. They weren’t playing for each other. There weren’t as many role players contributing and allowing the talent to come to the surface. That’s what you need to beat the best teams in the comp.”

Buckley pointed to a tactical call on Saturday night that hurt the Blues more than it helped.

“The tactic of playing Elijah Hollands as your sixth forward behind the stoppages in the back-half, it didn’t help that you were losing centre clearances and were on your back foot straight away, but the tactic of putting a forward in behind the contest, it basically fuelled the Lions and Dayne Zorko,” he said.

“In the end, Brisbane were +2 or +3 in the middle of the ground when the ball was in their forward 50.

“There was no way Carlton was going to be able to move the ball. Whatever the tactics were there, they were ineffective, they fed into Brisbane’s strengths, it was designed to minimise damage more than giving themselves a chance to win.

“Only the coaches would know whether this was about minimisation. Maybe it was to stay in the game long enough to give themselves a chance.

“I would’ve thought the only way Carlton were going to win that game was to hold six forwards deep, which they did later in the game.

“It was a perfect storm. You hold De Koning as the sub, you get smashed at centre bounces which is a strength of yours which means you’re on your back foot as far as territory goes.

“You want to take uncontested marks away, but your tactics lend to the opposition being able to chip the ball around.”

Tom Morris believes there won’t be a heap of personnel change at the club in 2025, given their assistant coaches are contracted.

“The assistant coaches Ash Hansen, Aaron Hamill and Tim Clarke are all contracted for 2025. I just wonder how they’re going to be able to get some fresh voices in this footy department given what we’ve seen this year,” Morris told SEN Breakfast.

“We know they have a new fitness boss coming in from the Swans. It’ll be Brian Cook’s last year as CEO next year, Luke Sayers the president it’ll be his last year at the Blues.

“So there’s changes coming at the Blues, maybe it won’t be the senior coach or the senior players, but around the outskirts there are changes coming.”

Sydney’s Rob Inness will join Carlton in 2025 as their new Head of High Performance, replacing Andrew Russell.