Why Carlton’s viral training gaffe is no joke for fans

3 weeks ago 3

Opinion

February 4, 2026 — 3.30pm

On a Monday morning in late June, Carlton players filed into the club’s Ikon Park headquarters, many with their tails between their legs.

Two days earlier at the MCG they had been thrashed by lowly North Melbourne.

A Carlton pre-season training session in January has sparked plenty of online commentary.

They only lost by 11 points, but the scoreline flattered the Blues. They were 46 points down at three-quarter-time and their awful season had hit rock bottom. The players worried about how brutal Monday’s review would be. They shouldn’t have been.

Instead of tearing paint off the walls as he may have done as Lions captain in the early 2000s, coach Michael Voss instead decided to use the carrot, not the stick. He replayed positive vision over and over, concentrating on all the things his players had done well, particularly during the last quarter, when the Blues kicked five goals to nothing.

Players this masthead spoke to were shocked. They had deserved to be verbally smashed, but they weren’t.

Voss is not the only coach to avoid berating players to achieve a positive outcome. Speak to any club psychologist, any assistant coach, and they will tell you how hard it can be to connect with the younger generation of players.

If you criticise them too hard, you risk losing them forever.

But if you parlay the review of that North Melbourne defeat into the vision of recent pre-season training drill that has gone viral – and the reaction of captain Patrick Cripps – questions need to be asked.

Skipper Patrick Cripps found the funny side of the training session.

Here’s a quick summary.

Last week, vision recorded by Blues fan and popular YouTuber Heath Buck attending open training circulated on social media. The video showed approximately 90 seconds of Carlton players attempting to complete a no-pressure kicking drill. The vision wasn’t good. Scratch that. The vision was dreadful. There were targets being missed, chest marks being dropped and balls literally going over fences. On Tuesday, Cripps was at Triple M for an interview with Billy Brownless and his old mate Dale “Daisy” Thomas.

“I’ve got a funny story with that viral clip. There was one guy that wheeled on his left and put it three rows back … that may have been me,” Cripps giggled.

Cue raucous laughter.

“Luckily, there wasn’t more vision of it because I did the same thing the second time.”

More laughter.

“We had a ‘players’ culture day’ the other day, and we just found the humour in it. It was one of the funniest things I’ve seen, watching it back. Our Carlton supporters wouldn’t have been pumped seeing that. It wasn’t great footage, but we saw the humour in it. I did laugh very hard watching that video.”

A couple of things must be taken into account.

First, Cripps has been an extraordinary player for Carlton. Often carrying the weight of an entire club on his shoulders, his on-field leadership and individual performance have been beyond question. Whatever happens for the rest of his career, he will be remembered as one of the greatest players to pull on the navy-blue guernsey.

Secondly, his reaction must be considered within the vacuum that is Carlton. This is a club that has been one of the most criticised organisations in Australian sport since the turn of the millennium.

Outside of maybe Essendon (who won a flag in 2000) and the fading profile of the A-Leagues, Carlton’s troubles have been the major source of cruel comedy from sports fans around the country.

The outside noise surrounding the club can, at times, be suffocating. So, if Cripps were to publicly condemn his teammates for poor training standards, it’s plausible that it would do more harm than good.

Still, Carlton fans listening to Cripps’ interview in the car or watching it on YouTube would be hard-pressed to laugh along with their inspirational skipper.

They’ve gone 25 seasons without a grand final appearance and the only metrics they lead the competition on in that period is sacked coaches and No.1 draft picks.

To make matters worse, the strongest criticism of Carlton under Voss is their lack of tangible game plan and horrendous skill level; both of which were on show in the short clip of training.

To see their captain laughing at it doesn’t fill the fans with confidence that those issues are being dealt with.

This masthead spoke to five former captains – three of them premiership captains – to ask what they made of the vision and Cripps’ reaction.

All five said Cripps’ reaction internally with his teammates would be very different to the way he dealt with it publicly.

Coach Michael Voss (centre) addresses his players at a pre-season training hit.

That may well be true. Cripps has built a reputation as a strong leader and a wonderful footballer.

The problem is, optics matter. Can you imagine Luke Hodge, Scott Pendlebury, Joel Selwood or even Voss, in his playing days, laughing at vision that poor?

When you look at the situation through the unique prism of Carlton and the past 25 years, Cripps’ reaction is understandable. After all, if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry, right?

But fans don’t get to see what happens behind close doors. They only see what happens on the training track and on the field. And in recent times; that ain’t good.

Sometimes, laughter isn’t the best medicine.

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