Graham Wright backing in Michael Voss to coach Carlton in 2026 is exactly the big move the Blues needed from their new CEO.

There have been bubbling expectations with Wright. They hope that he will be Carlton’s saviour, and come in with a level of decisiveness and thoughtfulness that has been missing from this football club for a long, long time.

This recommendation to the board, one that someone like Wright would never make lightly, helps mark a new era of hopefulness – because it’s incredibly easy to go down the path of sacking a coach, papering over the quite obvious cracks within a club, and enter a cyclical black hole of self-destruction that is impossible to escape from.

No club knows this better than Carlton.

We saw Melbourne sack Simon Goodwin earlier in the week, with their focus being on the appointment of a new coach by September’s end. Their supporters will be blasting Green Day between now and then while in a semi-slumber.

It’s an interesting comparison between the two clubs. Both have high hopes about their teams. Both suffer from incredible delusions of grandeur, and have for long periods.

The Demons did need a change, but to think that the problems started and stopped with Goodwin is laughable. Their fans will be hoping that isn’t the mindset of their board.

On the flipside, Wright has waltzed in and backed the coach in.

It’s important for a couple of reasons. More than any other possible move, this shifts the focus to a complete and hopefully seismic internal review for the Blues. The issues are significant and cultural.

This a club that has long been delusional in its self-rating. In Wright, they have one of the best operators in the game with a track record that speaks for itself. His work at Hawthorn and Collingwood has been transformative.

His experience, working through the difficulties and seeing the proper way to build a team and a club, immediately makes Wright the most trustworthy person Carlton fans have been able to support in a long, long time.

He won’t get sucked into narratives or influenced by external factors. Delusions stop with him.

Changing the culture takes time, but consistency is key and Wright knows that.

I’ve discussed many times in this column the issue with Voss’ coaching, but it’s also true that the list management has been poor, as has been the support for the coach.

Many people, including high-profile journalists, have gone on record in the past saying this is a premiership-quality list. But it’s a list so dependent on Jacob Weitering being a great of the modern era to prevent them from plunging further into obscurity. A list that has been filled with so many of the same types of midfielders that Pep Guardiola would have a tough time pulling the strings. A list that has had two of the top key forwards in the competition for half a decade, yet seldom with surrounding pieces that have been truly supportive.

Voss isn’t absolved in all of this, by the way, but the reliance on individual brilliance has masked the fact that this might be a squad with some good names and talent, but certainly not a ‘good’ one.

Michael Voss looks despondent during Carlton’s loss to North Melbourne. (Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)

Then, there are the assistants. Quite frankly, with Wright having backed Voss in, we can expect plenty of changes at this level.

The natural tendency in the immediate aftermath is to think about Damien Hardwick, or Nathan Buckley, as coaches that were backed in able to use that to switch up their styles. We saw how they blossomed.

What Wright will be thinking is of the best way to support Voss, and attempting to go down the Adelaide path.

The Crows have slowly built a really nice, complementary list over several seasons. Smart recruiting, plus balanced talents across lines, has seen them jump from well outside the eight to looking at a minor premiership.

Matthew Nicks has been on the receiving end of plenty of criticism, but the Crows have continued to back their head coach. But the biggest change hasn’t been with Nicks himself. Sure, he has developed and is improving with his gameday coaching in particular, but he has simply been better supported.

The single best recruit the Crows have made in recent memory is securing Murray Davis as their Coaching Director. For all intents and purposes, Davis is Nicks’ right-hand man – someone with over a decade’s worth of experience at the Lions, with a range of responsibilities and exposures to different scenarios.

Nicks had over 100 games and five seasons’ worth of experience when Davis was brought in. The Crows haven’t looked back since.

That’s what Wright will be searching for – if he can’t land the single best person, then recruiting a couple of highly-experienced assistants to increase the knowledge around Voss will surely be the aim.

Voss himself will finish the home-and-away season with 197 games coached across nine seasons.

His time at Brisbane was grim – those were dark days and he was never ready for the job. A club legend thrust into the limelight without proper experience was always likely to end badly.

At season’s end, he will have had four years at Carlton, for two finals appearances – this will, however, be the first year with a losing record.

Some will say it’s been too long and four years is enough. No matter how many games Voss has been in charge, though, he has never had the full support system that has clearly enabled other coaches to develop and become successful.

Whether or not Voss is the right coach to take the Blues to their next premiership remains to be seen, but for too long, Carlton have refused to be self-reflective in their continuous striving to achieve greatness. Instead, they hit system reboot to try and appease fans and themselves, make minor changes, barely scratch the surface of success … and do it all again.

That’s not how Graham Wright does things. With him as CEO, the Blues have someone whose experience they can trust.