Former Carlton captain Marc Murphy has unloaded on legendary coach Mick Malthouse, stating that “it was definitely the wrong decision” for the Blues to sack Brett Ratten in 2012.
After a disappointing end to the 2012 campaign, Carlton turned to Malthouse as the man to hopefully guide a talented list to their first premiership since 1995.
But Malthouse – who led the club with Murphy as his captain – couldn’t recreate the old magic and was eventually fired in 2015.
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“The decision to get Mick was like ‘well he can take us to the next level’ – obviously that’s the thinking with the hierarchy at the time – but I just think the support needed to be better around Ratts to help him,” Murphy said on the Dyl and Friends podcast.
“(That should’ve been) the way forward. I know hindsight, it’s easy to say that now because everyone at the time was thinking Mick was one year out of coaching, he’s the guy who’s been proven to get teams to grand finals, so you could understand that decision at the time.
“I just think there’d been so much investment in Ratts and we were progressing really well and unfortunately through injury and circumstance, I think it was too quick to just go ‘nah, we’ll go in another direction’. Essentially you end up having to go backwards before you go up again really. Very rarely will someone come in as a new coach and just go bounce straightaway.”
Murphy also claimed that Malthouse had told him he wasn’t his preferred captain and that he was appointed to the role by the players.
“He would’ve gone with someone else, but because they weren’t going to be featuring regularly in the side, he couldn’t go down that path,” Murphy said.
“So initially when you get told you’re captain, you’d like (it) to be a real positive period, so it wasn’t a great start. That was his prerogative, but it would’ve been nice for him to turn up to a leadership group meeting now and again.
“There’s no point me coming out and bashing Mick Malthouse, because he’s obviously one of the great coaches of all time, he’s got the record (for most games coached), so what am I going to do in terms of coming out and slamming him? But his time at Carlton, I don’t think he was really in it for the right reasons.
“Then once it turned pear shaped, it was all about him, unfortunately, at the end and I was left to be thrown (under) the bus quite a bit.
“He was obviously a terrific coach, but unfortunately at Carlton for us and for me and the boys who were there working so hard, it just didn’t work out.”
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