Adam Simpson will join Carlton’s four-person panel to help choose the club’s next senior coach after Michael Voss was moved on following the round nine defeat to Brisbane. Carlton CEO Graham Wright, president Rob Priestley and football boss Chris Davies will also sit on the panel, while the group will consult with Blues football director Greg Williams as the search unfolds.
Priestley said the club would take its time, describing the process as one that will assess all candidates over the coming months before identifying the person best placed to succeed Voss, with board approval still required before any appointment is finalised. He also said Carlton would not offer a running public commentary while the review is under way.
Simpson arrives with a coaching résumé that gives the panel clear perspective. He took West Coast to the 2015 Grand Final and then to the premiership in 2018, and has also worked as a coaching consultant at Carlton this season alongside his media commitments. That makes him one of the few people involved who has recently seen the club from both inside and out.
Voss left on Tuesday after Carlton’s loss to Brisbane in round nine, a result that extended the club’s skid to seven successive defeats and left it with eight losses from nine games this season. For a team that had drifted badly before the change, the coaching search is happening in the shadow of those numbers, which are stark even by the standards of a difficult year.
Since Voss departed, interim coach Josh Fraser has steadied results with back-to-back wins, giving the club something closer to the form it needed weeks earlier. Carlton now heads into Saturday night’s meeting with Geelong at the MCG with the search for a permanent coach continuing behind the scenes, and with the board still holding the final say on who gets the job.
