Post-match conference with John Barker — http://www.afl.com.au/video/2015-07-24/full-postmatch-blues

No Carlton supporter would have gone into last night thinking that there was a chance. Not a single one. Every single Carlton supporter went into last night’s match vs Hawthorn thinking “Well, hopefully we don’t get destroyed, hopefully the boys show some spirit that has finally surfaced in the past few weeks”.

But where was it? For all intents and purposes, it was like an U21 team playing against some 5 year olds from Auskick. The hilarious thing about that metaphor is that it’s remarkably close to the truth. Carlton had somewhere in the vicinity of 1,500 less games than the Hawks, an incredible gap in experience. The way little kids just stand around without real understanding or direction (totally acceptable when you’re 5) was also there. At the end of the match, the brave Carlton fans that did stick around were… clapping the boys off the ground. Quite like mum’s and dad’s showing some passionate support for their little tackers at Auskick — only here on the big stage at Etihad, this was more of a polite pity clap.

Obviously I don’t think we need the old days where you may have needed an armed escort for the players to safely get home when losing by over 100-points — however this was really a sign of how last night’s match went.

Carlton had something like 40 defensive 50 possessions, and of those they only converted 2 of them into forward 50 entries. Hawks had 22 marks inside 50 to 6. SIX.

No doubt about it, there was almost a negative chance the Blue boys were going to win this match. However, when out on the ground it was like Mick Malthouse was back — the guys seemed more deflated than Fevola after a night on the piss.

The saddest part for me was that I didn’t even feel as much compassion for the Blues as I felt for the commentators. I was listening to Triple M Footy at one point while I was out, and I really felt bad for JB and the boys, as I can totally understand as a former commentator. Calling a match where it’s an absolute clinic like that is remarkably difficult to do. I think JB and Gary Lyon said it at one point actually “it’s really hard to call these kinds of games but we’re doing our best”.

Hopefully the Blue boys can step up and bring some more passion and dedication to next week’s game against the Roos, because slipping back to “Mick-days” like last night is just reprehensible.

Barker said in the press-conference “there’s a sizable gap” which is totally true, and as I’ve mentioned a couple of times there were no illusions of Carlton winning last night. But the players (apart from Kruezer, Murphy, Curnow, Bell and maybe Cripps) seemed to take that on board then decide there was also an effort and commitment gap as well. This just cannot continue. Even in the face of an incredibly strong adversary, you need to give it your all. There’s a certain movie I could mention that demonstrates this but let’s not go down that path.

At the end of the day, lets keep this in mind: Carlton plays the Hawks again in round 23. Who’s going to turn up in that match? Some Auskick kids who have no passion or understanding and thinks “well we’re going to lose lets just take a bit of a jog around”? Or a team that knows they have a big challenge ahead, but still gets in there and gives it a bloody go?