Carlton coach Michael Voss has revealed how he will guide his team from home due to being stuck in isolation after testing positive for COVID-19 during the week.
Voss is one of a number of the Blues contingent who’s entered into the AFL’s health and safety protocols, after contracting the virus following the team’s season-opener against Richmond.
While assistant coach Ash Hansen is set to take the reins inside the coaches’ box in Marvel Stadium when the Blues take on the Western Bulldogs on Thursday, Voss will still be in touch with his staffers.
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“I’ve got the deluxe version of watching football on Thursday night,” Voss said with a laugh on Nine’s Footy Classified.
“I’ve got four camera angles and I’ll have the live stats coming through. I’ll have a feed into the coaches’ box.”
However, Voss revealed that he’d place his faith in Hansen and the rest of his coaching staff, who will be in attendance at the ground.
“While that’s all going on and it’s great that they’ve been able to provide that, we’re quite clear that the leadership and the decision-making sits in the coaches’ box. It doesn’t sit where I am,” Voss said.
“I’m very lucky that I’ve got a group of coaches that have all had coaching experience, they’ve all coached their own teams, so they’ve got experience sitting (in) and leading a coaches’ box. So it’s important to be able to trust them.
“I won’t speak directly to Ash; I’ll be speaking to Aaron Greaves, who is our coaching performance manager. I’ll be chatting to him when I need to, but it’s very important that the coaches make the decisions.
“They’ve got the feel on the game. If I need to have input, I will, but largely it’s on them to get the job done.”
The Carlton coach admitted that putting trust in his staff was something he’d worked on after his stint as senior coach with Brisbane between 2009 and 2013.
“The very first thing was ensuring the right support is there,” Voss said.
“You can certainly get lost in other things other than what is the core of coaching, and that’s being able to spend time with your players and coaches in the right areas. I was pretty determined to be able to get that right support, and Carlton were fantastic in being able to facilitate that.
“The second thing was to enable people to be able to go to work and to trust them to get their jobs done.
“I felt that was really important in my management moving forward as a coach that we get really skilled people in their positions. We trust them to get their jobs done and we let them go to work.”
Voss, who’d grown up a Carlton fan because of his father, admitted that getting to coach the Blues was “a genuine dream come true”.
Despite being overlooked in favour of David Teague for the Carlton job after an interview in 2019, Voss said he had no hesitations about getting in touch with the club again.
“In the end, the decision to get involved was a simple one,” Voss said.
“The harder decision eight years earlier was to decide what to do next. When I stepped away from it the first time and spent a year in the media, there was a sliding-door moment where I either stayed where I am or fought back into coaching.
“I just couldn’t stay away from the coaching. I loved competing, I love the ride of a win and a loss, and that’s what brings me back. I love coaching players. I guess then it was just about accepting what had happened and going back and working on some of your shortcomings as a coach over seven years.
“I’ve loved the experience (of coaching a big Victorian club). I thought it was really important to get myself away from Brisbane. I always hoped that eventually I’d end up back in Melbourne. I obviously have a lot of family here.
“This is where the heartland of football is and this is where I really want to be, and the fact that I’m coaching a really big club is a bonus.”