The 10 pivotal events that led to the downfall of Essendon and Carlton

Source : ABC NEWS

The year is 2001 and the AFL kicks off its season with a heavyweight clash between the league’s two most recent premiers — Essendon and North Melbourne. 

Each club has picked up a pair of premierships over the last decade and has built up one of the more spiteful rivalries in the competition.

Talismanic Kangaroos skipper Wayne Carey is not out there, but several members of North’s 1999 premiership-winning team are. 

Essendon’s side features 16 of the 22 players from the side that thumped Melbourne in the previous year’s grand final. 

The Bombers unfurl their premiership flag in celebration of their 16th VFL/AFL premiership, tying the record set by their bitter rivals Carlton. They are odds-on favourites to win their 17th premiership having lost just six of their previous 45 games.

The 2001 AFL landscape is vastly different compared to where the league is about to go over the next two and a half decades. 

There is no Gold Coast, GWS Giants or Tasmania. Hawthorn, Sydney and Geelong are all non-threats, mere shadows of the models of consistency they were each about to turn into over the next decade. 

Brisbane’s list is chock full of talent but the Lions are still seemingly finding their footing to begin 2001, having merged with Fitzroy just five years earlier. No one knows Brisbane is about to become one of the most frightening dynasties in league history.

The biggest difference in the league? Both Essendon and Carlton are legitimate premiership contenders. 

Like Essendon-North Melbourne clashes, Essendon-Carlton clashes of this era have the feel of being do-or-die affairs. 

The Blues had famously upset Essendon in the 1999 preliminary final, setting the table for an all-time revenge season from the Dons in 2000.

Both Essendon and Carlton going a quarter century without sniffing a 17th premiership seems inconceivable in 2001, but that is exactly what is about to happen.

The 2000 preliminary final remains the most recent most important game the two clubs have played against each other. 

Over the last 25 years, both Essendon and Carlton have traversed separate journeys that have seen them put out a ton of mediocre teams mixed in with some truly horrific ones.

Carlton’s premiership drought is currently 31 years and counting, while Essendon’s is 26. Both are comfortably each club’s longest periods between flags.

So how did these two powerful Victorian clubs with hugely loyal fanbases simultaneously fall on hard times?

Here are 10 pivotal events that have led to the downfall of both Essendon and Carlton.

2002: Carlton stripped of draft picks over salary cap drama

The very beginning of Carlton’s demise can be traced back to its management of the salary cap in 2000 and 2001. 

Several of Carlton’s big names who played a major part in its 1995 premiership are gone by the end of the 90s. 

The Blues have a season to forget in 2002, winning the club’s first ever wooden spoon after finishing last on the ladder with a paltry 3-19 record.

Carlton is slated to pick at the top of the draft where childhood Blues fan Brendon Goddard is expected to go. 

However, shortly before the draft, the AFL finds Carlton guilty of “deliberate, elaborate and sophisticated” cheating of the salary cap in 2000 and 2001. 

The club’s cap breaches are related to illegal payments made to Stephen Silvagni, Craig Bradley, Fraser Brown and Stephen O’Reilly.

As a result of the breaches, Carlton is stripped of picks 1, 2, 31 and 34 from the 2002 draft, all of its picks from the 2003 pre-season draft and its first and second round picks from the 2003 draft. 

Carlton finishes second-last in 2003, going 4-18, and due to its poor record in consecutive years, it earns a priority pick and selects Andrew Walker second overall. The Western Bulldogs take future Brownlow medallist Adam Cooney with the top pick.

2002: Cap miscalculation forces Essendon to gut premiership side

Despite being beaten by Brisbane in the 2001 grand final, Essendon’s list is still relatively young and figures to be contenders for the next couple of years at least. 

Essendon structures its salaries to its star players on the understanding that the salary cap will rise by 10 per cent, only to be stunned when it goes up by only a third of that figure — leaving the Bombers in a $600,000 salary cap hole.

After being forced to trade beloved backman Damien Hardwick in the summer of 2001, Kevin Sheedy is given the decision of either trading one of his stars — Matthew Lloyd, James Hird or Marc Mercuri — or trading a couple of role players. 

Sheedy begrudgingly chooses to do the latter and the Bombers offload Justin Blumfield, Chris Heffernan and Blake Caracella — three core players from the 2000 premiership side. 

The list culls and retirements mean just over two years after winning the premiership, just 13 members of the 22 that played in the 2000 grand final remain on Essendon’s list to start 2003. 

“You share premierships, you share grand finals, you share trust and honesty and loyalty. Then you pick up a phone and sack them, and it was never the same,” former Essendon assistant Robert Shaw would later say of the decision to gut the 2000 team. Sheedy considers leaving the club then and there, such is his heartache over the moves.

Instead of going to the draft to rebuild around the likes of Lloyd, Hird and the other remaining players from the core of the 2000 side, Essendon attempts to top up with experienced players to fill out the list. 

Names such as Scott Camporeale, Matthew Allan, Justin Murphy, Mark Alvey, Ty Zantuck and Damien Cupido all roll through the list in the years that follow, but none are able to make the Bombers a true contender.

2006: Lloyd rips hamstring off the bone

By the time 2006 comes around, Essendon’s time as a premiership contender is well and truly over. 

There are only nine players remaining on the list from the 2000 grand final team, and James Hird is no longer the captain.

That honour is given to Matthew Lloyd, who is still one of the best forwards in the competition and is still somewhat in his prime at 28. Lloyd is well and truly the centrepiece of the entire Essendon project now.

Essendon hosts reigning premiers Sydney at home to open the 2006 season, and Lloyd looks ready to tear the competition apart.

Lloyd destroys grand final hero Leo Barry in the opening quarter of the round one clash, kicking six of his eight goals as the Bombers record a 27-point win. 

He follows that up with four more goals in a loss to Brisbane in round two and appears well on his way to another All-Australian calibre season.

However, it is not to be. In round three, Lloyd badly injures his hamstring diving for a mark and misses the remainder of the season.

It is an injury which saps any amount of mobility Lloyd had left, and his days as a dominant full forward come to an end before he retires three years later at just 31.

2007: Bombers fumble Sheedy’s exit, Hardwick’s PowerPoint fails

After leading Essendon to four premierships in his storied tenure as coach, the last few years of Sheedy at Essendon has the vibe of a marriage that has well and truly fizzled out.

Sheedy’s last ever trip to the finals comes in 2004, when the Bombers upset the fifth-placed Demons in an elimination final, and he follows that with seasons of eight wins, three wins and 10 wins. 

The Bombers start out Sheedy’s last season 7-4 including impressive wins against Sydney and West Coast, the previous season’s grand finalists, but it all goes pear-shaped. 

Essendon awkwardly announces that it will not renew Sheedy’s contract despite the club being in finals contention, and Sheedy coaches out the remainder of the season despite essentially being sacked. 

There are plenty of candidates to replace Sheedy and the Bombers embark on a two-month process which includes sacked Melbourne coach Neale Daniher, West Coast assistant Peter Sumich, Hawthorn assistant Damien Hardwick and Essendon’s own VFL coach, Matthew Knights.

The Bombers appoint Knights due to his familiarity with the club and its players. Hardwick, a member of the Essendon’s 2000 premiership team, finishes second.

Hawthorn doesn’t let Hardwick bring his work laptop into the Essendon interview because it contains intellectual property, and Hardwick famously fails to get his PowerPoint presentation for Essendon’s chiefs working on a different laptop.

Then-Essendon boss Peter Jackson later says of Hardwick’s PowerPoint: “It didn’t work properly and he got a bit rattled.” Knights coaches Essendon for three seasons before being sacked at the end of 2010.

2009: Carlton is forced to sack Fevola

By the end of the 2000s, Carlton has finally built itself back up to be a relevant football club. 

Chris Judd is the club’s captain and one of the game’s best midfielders, while the Blues have plenty of young talent on the list, including three No.1 picks — Marc Murphy, Bryce Gibbs and Matthew Kreuzer.

The Blues also have a genuine superstar in their forward line in Brendan Fevola, who makes his third All-Australian team in 2009.

Fevola wins the second of his two career Coleman Medals in 2009 after leading the AFL with 89 goals. 

In the four seasons spanning the 2006 and 2009 seasons, Fevola kicks 331 goals, a mark that dwarfs the totals of Lance Franklin (284), Jonathan Brown (267) and Nick Riewoldt (245) in the same period.

While Fevola is kicking goals on the field, his life off the field is slowly beginning to unravel. 

It all culminates in the 2009 Brownlow Medal count where an obviously drunk Fevola behaves inappropriately while doing a guest episode of Street Talk at the event for Channel Nine’s Footy Show.

The antics are so bad that Carlton trades Fevola, who is still just 28, to Brisbane in exchange for Lachie Henderson and a first round pick which becomes Kane Lucas. 

2012: Carlton sacks Ratten in favour of Malthouse

After an extended period of losing, Carlton is back up and about at the end of the 2000s courtesy of its former skipper Brett Ratten, who is now the club’s coach. 

Ratten guides the Blues to finals in three straight years between 2009 and 2011, and even wins a final in 2011, beating Essendon in an elimination final in the two teams’ first finals meeting since the 2000 preliminary final. 

Unfortunately for Ratten, he is sacked after winning 11 games in 2012, and the Blues go for the splashy hire by signing Mick Malthouse, who is a couple of years removed from winning his third premiership as a coach. 

The Blues are middling at best and embarrassing at worst under Malthouse in what ends up being a torrid 52-game stint spanning three seasons. 

Malthouse’s first season sees the Blues finish ninth, but he’s granted a lifeline courtesy of Essendon being banned from the finals, and he manages to lead Carlton to an upset elimination final win over Richmond.

The finals fairytale doesn’t give the Blues a boost the following season as they begin Malthouse’s second season 0-4 before stumbling to seven-win season while Malthouse publicly feuds with the club’s administration, namely president Mark LoGiudice and CEO Steven Trigg. 

Malthouse starts out 1-7 the following season and is sacked. He has since lamented taking the job, saying, “the biggest disappointment of my coaching career is that I should have looked further into Carlton’s lack of forward thinking before I signed on”.

John Barker takes over as Carlton’s interim coach for the remainder of the 2015 season and the club finishes last on the ladder with just four wins before selecting Jacob Weitering, Harry McKay and Charlie Curnow in the first round of the draft.

2013: Essendon supplements scandal

The hopes are high at Essendon ahead of the 2013 season after positive signs in 2012. 

Jobe Watson, the captain, is the AFL’s Brownlow medallist and James Hird is coach alongside premiership-winning ex-Geelong coach Mark Thompson, who is his lead assistant. 

However, in February it all goes pear-shaped as Essendon self-reports to the AFL and the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA) over concerns surrounding its supplements program from the 2012 season. 

It kicks off what ends up being a drawn out saga spanning a total of four years and costing the club millions of dollars. 

In August 2013, the AFL fines Essendon $2 million over a series of charges, and the Bombers are also kicked out of the 2013 finals series despite a 14-8 record that would have seen them finish seventh. 

The Bombers also lose draft picks in both the 2013 and 2014 drafts while Hird is suspended for 12 months and returns to coach after his ban before eventually leaving the club in 2015. 

Eventually, 34 Essendon players who were involved in the 2012 supplements program are suspended by CAS in January 2016 and Watson is forced to hand back his Brownlow Medal. 

Essendon’s 14 wins in 2013 is its most in a season since 2001. The club has failed to win 14 home and away games in the 12 seasons that have followed.

2018: Daniher’s career halted by groin problems

Hopes are once again high at the start of 2018 with Essendon finally appearing to be past the depths of the supplements scandal. 

The Bombers, having retained stars such as Dyson Heppell, Michael Hurley and Cale Hooker despite the scandal, have added young stars such as Zach Merrett and Joe Daniher.

Daniher is considered one of the best young forwards in the competition and is named an All-Australian in 2017 after kicking 65 goals. He is the centrepiece of the next era of contention for Essendon.

Eyebrows are raised when Daniher starts out the 2018 season curiously devoid of the athleticism which allowed him to flourish the year before and he kicks just eight goals in his first seven games. 

The Bombers shut Daniher down for the season after scans reveal the early onset of osteitis pubis. His time as a star for the club is done, but they don’t know it yet. 

Daniher has a strong pre-season in 2019, but his season is delayed due to a mysterious calf injury suffered at training. He eventually returns in Round 5, but plays just four matches due to another groin injury. 

Disillusioned from the repeated injuries, Daniher asks for a trade to Sydney, but Essendon rejects the bid and holds him to his contract. Daniher plays just 11 games in his final three seasons before joining Brisbane as a free agent at the end of 2020.

To make things worse for Essendon, Daniher’s groin injuries are never seen again once he leaves. He plays 96 games across the next four seasons for Brisbane, kicking 204 goals, before retiring after winning the 2024 premiership with the Lions.

2022: Bombers knife Rutten in a bid to lure Clarkson

After a clumsy handover year in 2020, former Richmond assistant Ben Rutten finally has clear air in 2021 and gets the Bombers to the finals, where they are again belted in an elimination final.

Despite the loss, the spirits are high. Rutten has empowered youth and the culture at Essendon appears to be taking a turn for the better.

However, the following year things once again go pear-shaped as the club slumps to a 7-15 record, finishing 15th. 

The season takes a farcical turn when there is a power struggle which sees Dave Barham wrench the presidency out of Paul Brasher’s hands in the final weeks of the season.

With a game still to be played, Barham sounds out former Hawthorn premiership coach Alastair Clarkson to be Essendon’s next coach, despite Rutten still having a year to run on his contract.

Clarkson considers it, but is already too far down the road with North Melbourne, so kindly rejects Essendon’s offer.

Rutten is made to coach the final game of the season, and understandably sees his side get smashed, and then tells media he deserves better and calls for unity at Essendon. He is sacked less than 24 hours later.

Essendon embarks on a full review of the club, and Brad Scott wins the job over Hird, who is inexplicably empowered enough to throw his hat in the ring one more time despite his involvement in the supplements saga from a decade earlier.

2025: Blues president has lewd image leaked

After nine years on the Carlton board, Luke Sayers is unanimously elected to be the Blues president midway through the 2021 season. 

Sayers immediately leads an independent review of the club and clears out the administration and football department.

The initial signs are good. Sayers sacks CEO Cain Liddle and head coach David Teague following the findings of the review, but appoints former Geelong CEO Brian Cook, in what is seen as a major coup for the club.

Michael Voss is selected as Carlton’s next coach, another Sayers appointment. 

Voss leads Carlton to the brink of the finals in his first season before leading the Blues to a preliminary final in his second season. 

Carlton looks headed to the grand final after kicking the first five goals of the preliminary final against the Brisbane Lions at the Gabba before being mown down. 

Ahead of the 2025 season, Sayers posts a lewd image to his Twitter account, before deleting it shortly after. The AFL Integrity Unit investigates the incident and backs up Sayers’s claim that he was hacked and clears him of any wrongdoing. 

After the investigation is complete, Sayers decides to step down. The entire saga casts a cloud over the Blues to begin the 2025 season, and they stumble to a 9-14 season, finishing 11th.

A bonus! Blown first-round draft choices cruel both clubs

A common failure among both clubs is their inability to draft consistently well, and it is this inability that explains why both Essendon and Carlton have struggled in the modern AFL era where good drafting and recruiting is paramount to fielding a contender.

It is not as if both teams haven’t had shots at the top of the draft board either.

Carlton has had a pick inside the top five of the AFL draft on 10 different occasions since 2003. Of the players chosen in those slots, only three — Marc Murphy, Jacob Weitering and Sam Walsh — have gone on to make an All-Australian team. 

Others such as Sam Petrevski-Seton (fifth overall in 2016) and Paddy Dow (third overall in 2017) have been complete write-offs.

Essendon’s selections at the top of the draft have been even worse. Between 2000 and 2007 — the end of the Hird-Sheedy era — the Bombers selected 12 players with top-20 picks in the draft. Just one of them — Patrick Ryder — made an All-Australian team, and he was a Port Adelaide player when he achieved that feat. 

Whiffing on selection after selection while also adding cast-offs from rival clubs meant Essendon essentially wasted the back half of Hird and Lloyd’s careers. 

Essendon’s draft misses carried on into the 2020s due to the club’s baffling decision to retain recruitment boss Adrian Dodoro. 

The Bombers selected inside the top 15 on six occasions between 2016 and 2022. So far, none of the players picked look anywhere close to making an All-Australian team, leaving a massive hole in the club’s current list demographic.