How many times over the years have we seen a team buoyed to mark the occasion of a favourite son’s farewell game with an inspired performance and a win against the odds?
It took about 90 seconds on Thursday night to realise that wasn’t going to be Carlton.
For Sam Docherty’s final match in navy blue, off the back of a confidence-boosting win, with every reason to give that five per cent extra that often turns comfortable defeats into famous triumphs, the Blues were … as pitiful as they’ve been at any stage of this wretched season.
Forget the 24-point final margin that flatters them entirely – this was by no means an end to the Thursday night blowouts that have dominated the last few months. The Hawks were six goals to one up at quarter time, didn’t even play all that well to establish the game-winning lead, and completely coasted from there, with the final margin as close as the Blues got.
Along the way, their display epitomised everything wrong with Carlton in 2025. The system, the skill level, the planning, the dare, the effort – and perhaps most damning of all, the coaching.
Docherty was no chance of getting the perfect farewell, or even a dignified ending from a team determined to send him out on a high. The Blues just weren’t capable of it.
Offensively, the Blues remain maddeningly conservative in their approach, a strategy brought to farcical extremes by the Hawks’ refusal to let them exit out the front of stoppages, giving them few options to distribute cleanly into space, and time and again forcing them into what every Carlton fan has grown to hate this year – high, aimless bombs to an outmatched forward line bullied out of the drop zone on a regular basis.
Defensively, they were hilariously ill-equipped to deal with Hawthorn’s fast, damaging handballs, overlap run, and continual testing of their set-up behind the ball with uncontested marks galore, content to go side to side until finally exposing a chink in the armour and running their lance right through it.
When the two collided – such as when the Hawks, backing their foot skills to the hilt, bit off far too much trying to attack the corridor and presented a golden turnover chance – the Blues lacked the nerve, and to be honest, the structure, to punish them.
There were countless examples to pick on in the first half, but the most glaring is surely this one from George Hewett – not least because he is somehow still the Blues’ most effective kick inside 50, and was clearly their best on the night.
Marking some 70 metres from goal, Hewett has no one on the mark, just an encroaching Hawk coming from side on to pressure, and an open 50 ahead of him.
Part of the problem is that the Blues simply haven’t been quick enough to get into attacking positions compared to their Hawks counterparts – Blake Hardwick has shifted easily as the spare behind the ball to right in the sweet spot for kicks inside 50, while no less than four Blues are screaming towards goal but manned up by brown and gold jumpers.
Compare that to both how quickly the likes of Jack Ginnivan, Dylan Moore and Nick Watson get themselves out the back running into goal when it was the Hawks’ turn to attack, and how deep Jack Gunston sets himself to be able to lead up at the football in exactly this scenario.
Still, Hewett has the option to take territory, chip over the top to a teammate just inside 50, or even have a crack himself. Instead, he goes behind his mark, waits ten seconds, and by the time he attempts to pinpoint a pass inside 50 to Harry McKay on the lead, the Hawks have stacked the backline so that the big Blue competes in the air in a two on one which the Hawks quickly defuse.
It was the tale of a first quarter that would surely rank among the most frustrating of the entire year for Blues fans: with an extra inside 50, a 4-2 centre clearance differential and an edge for contested possessions as well, Carlton had one goal to show for it, two scores, and a 29-point deficit.
Perhaps the most extraordinary stat of the year was that at half time, the Blues were -20 in metres gained from handballs – that is, their handpasses throughout the first half ended up on aggregate closer to Hawthorn’s goal than their own.
Unsurprisingly, it’s their lowest of the season – and a perfect encapsulation of the game, given the Hawks gained 248 metres by handball, their best first half of the year. Over the top of oncoming Blues, fast hands out of congestion, damaging ground balls to free teammates – you name it, the Hawks did it by hand.
When the Blues handballed, usually out of congestion, it was invariably to a teammate in a modicum of space out the back of a stoppage. Yet he was given that clear air because the Hawks know to set up that way both minimises a Carlton strength and perfectly feeds into their weakness – Sam Mitchell knew the Blues’ midfield couldn’t be allowed to attack directly out of clearances, and that when under pressure most of them have a tendency to bang the ball on the boot and hope for the best.
Little wonder, then, that by midway through the second quarter, the Hawks had already racked up 12 intercept marks – they’d finish with 26, 18 of them raffled between James Sicily, Tom Barrass and Jack Scrimshaw, who ruled the skies in defence.
It’s partly an indictment on the talls – what good is a three key forward structure of Charlie Curnow, Tom De Koning and Harry McKay if they can’t even bring the ball to ground with any regularity? – but mostly, it shows just how often the Blues aimlessly bombed to the advantage of Barrass in particular.
But as maddening as the Blues were to watch on the attack, their work without the footy was, somehow, even worse.
Some, but certainly not all, of Carlton’s woes, particularly moving forward can be laid at the feet of Michael Voss: but he can’t do anything about the abysmal tackling, repeat token efforts by serial offenders, and general lethargy that dominated the Blues from the very first bounce – in a game, don’t forget, where they were meant to be honouring Sam Docherty with a spirited showing to send him off on a high.
There are two missed tackles in this one play to let Nick Watson in for almost a walk-in goal – and it doesn’t even include the five more earlier in the sequence that had Voss visibly screaming ‘COME ON! COME ON!’ in the box.
One of those missed tackles – as has been a habit this season – was from Adam Saad, who, it must be said, will once again be deservedly in the firing line this week for his defensive efforts.
One such play, in which Watson’s pace showed him up with ease to sprint right past him in pursuit of the ball, arrive first deep inside 50, and shoot out a handball to Connor McDonald for a goal, was as disrespectful to Docherty as it’s possible to be.
By midway through the second quarter, with the game shot to ribbons, the Blues had already missed 15 tackles while sticking just 19. So much for intensity right out of the gates.
And if you’re after a symbolic moment? Shortly after a long-range Will White goal in the second quarter, Blake Acres went down in pain after copping an off-the-ball bump from Sicily.
He was soon surrounded – not by angry Blues keen to remonstrate with a noted antagonist, but by a gaggle of Hawks with some choice words for Acres, most likely on how easily he’d gone to ground. And still, not a single Blue came over to fly the flag.
This was far from Carlton’s ugliest loss of the season. It’s far from the moment they confirmed they were broken.
But in so many ways, this defeat epitomised everything wrong with this team in 2025. That it coincided with the final game of a favourite son just makes it all the more unedifiying for everyone at the Blues.
