However, this early halcyon phase in the club's history was coming to an end. In , the first chinks in the armour appeared when Carlton suddenly found itself without a home after being evicted from its ground at the University of Melbourne.
Without the advantage of a home base the side slumped to third behind premiers Geelong, and Melbourne. The season saw Carlton playing its home matches at the southern end of Princes Park but it was not permitted either to charge admission or to enclose the land. The side improved slightly to finish as runner up to Geelong, which along with South Melbourne would dominate Victorian football for most of the next decade.
Of the 18 matches counted as being towards the Association premiership the Blues won 15 and drew 2, tasting defeat only in the away fixture against Geelong. It was thus as 'Champions of the Colony' that Carlton took part, a year later, in an historic match. The opposition was provided by a touring British rugby team which engaged in a total of 18 games of Australian football during the Victorian and South Australian legs of its tour, winning 5 and losing One of the losses came in the encounter with Carlton, which was watched by a crowd of 25, at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
Carlton won by 14 goals to 3, but:. They appeared to think of nothing but dribbling the ball through, and the smartness of their opponents invariably upset their calculations in this direction. The s was a period of decline in the Australian economy and this was mirrored at Carlton which by the middle of the decade had become little better than a chopping block for the likes of Essendon and Collingwood. Uncertainty regarding security of tenure of its facilities at Princes Park was also a source of concern.
Despite all this, at the end of the season Carlton was invited by the VFA's strongest and richest half a dozen clubs to join a breakaway competition to be known as the Victorian Football League. The only condition was that it secure a permanent home base where an admission charge could be levied, and after protracted negotiations with Carlton Cricket Club permission was obtained to use the enclosed cricket oval on Princes Park. When the VFL got underway in it consisted of eight clubs, St Kilda having also been asked to join - a fortuitous circumstance as far as the Blues were concerned as their only two wins for the year came at the expense of the team from the Junction Oval.
This pattern of failure was repeated in each of Carlton's first five seasons in the VFL. Clearly a fresh approach was needed, and this came in with the appointment as secretary and manager of former Fitzroy champion Jack Worrall, who had also represented both Victoria and Australia at cricket. Worrall was an extremely determined, energetic and imaginative character who in retrospect can be seen to have revolutionised Australian football.
Included in this tally of victories were notable triumphs over eventual runners up Essendon and third placed Fitzroy. In Carlton reached the VFL finals series for the first ever time only to bow out at the first hurdle to eventual premiers Collingwood by 4 points.
A temporary hiccup followed as Carlton ran third in but the Worrall regime, which survived a pre-season rebellion from certain players who considered it 'too Spartan', achieved full fruition in as the side finally broke through for a flag. A tally of 14 wins from 17 minor round matches brought pole position going into the finals where Carlton overcame Collingwood 9. The Blues' resolute defence was the key to their triumph, with half back flanker William Payne the widespread choice as best afield, ably abetted by full back Doug Gillespie and back pockets Les Beck and Norman 'Hackenschmidt' Clark.
The season saw Worrall continue to train his charges hard giving rise to continued resentment but also, paradoxically, ensuring that the team's edge was maintained. The Blues again topped the ladder going into the finals and again did not need to execute their right of challenge after a comfortable 56 point demolition of St Kilda and a hard fought 5 point win over South Melbourne in the final.
A new record crowd of 45, saw Carlton lead at every change by 1, 7 and 15 points before withstanding a desperate last quarter challenge from the southerners who on four separate occasions narrowed the margin to just a couple of points.
Final scores were Carlton 6. Carlton were now very much the pre-eminent force in VFL football and with being regarded as Australian football's official jubilee year Worrall had an additional incentive - if one were needed - to maintain the momentum. As it happened, saw Carlton put in one of the most dominant all round seasons in VFL history, losing just once, to Essendon in round twelve.
In the semi final encounter with St Kilda, played in atrociously wet conditions, the Blues did virtually as they liked all day and indeed it was not until the final term that St Kilda managed to kick a goal. The final against Essendon attracted a record crowd for the third successive year as 50, spectators packed the MCG hoping to see a classic. However, Jack Worrall effectively spoiled the game as a spectacle when he instructed his team to go on the defensive after they had established a 5.
On the whole it was a decidedly disappointing game, Essendon all through the 1st half failing to play up to their best form, and from the interval to the finish Carlton directed their efforts solely to kicking across the ground in order to prevent Essendon making up their leeway, in consequence of which Carlton only added 1 behind to their record of 5.
In the early stages of the game Essendon seemed to be over impressed by the importance of the occasion, lacked system, fumbled the ball, failed to watch their men and left their places, while Carlton played a fine, cool, systematic game with judgement and skill.
In the last two quarters Essendon showed to much greater advantage, adding 1. Carlton were The better team on the day won the match. Success does not always breed contentment, however. In addition to the dissatisfaction over Worrall's coaching methods, an increasingly large number of players were annoyed at what they perceived as the club hierarchy's reluctance to share with them the financial spoils of success.
Rightly or wrongly most of their ire was directed at Jack Worrall, whose front line position as club coach perhaps made him a more accessible target. Late in the season, with Carlton still very much an on field force to be reckoned with, Worrall resigned as coach, although for the time being retaining his position as club secretary. With skipper Fred Elliott taking over the coaching reins the side went within an ace of capturing a fourth successive pennant.
South Melbourne had the right of challenge, but few thought them capable of improving sufficiently to reverse the result of the final. The South brains trust had learned their lesson from the previous week, however, when their attempt to confront the stern physical challenge afforded by the Blues head on had failed lamentably.
This time "they decided to head for the open spaces. With their pace they avoided becoming bogged down in the crushes. The off season saw a 'reform group', consisting largely of players and their supporters, sweeping to power after a series of controversial ballots, and Jack Worrall immediately severed his last link with the club by resigning as secretary, with Arthur Ford taking over.
Worrall went on to coach Essendon with some success but meanwhile the press branded Carlton's treatment of him as smacking "of both folly and ingratitude". The finals were a different story, however. The semi final saw the Blues kick themselves out of contention against South Melbourne, going down by 12 points, 6. However, intrigue centred not on the match itself but on Carlton's decision to drop three selected players from its line-up shortly before the start; this, it later emerged, was because club officials had apparently got wind of the players having accepted bribes to 'play dead', claims which, in the case of two of the three individuals involved, were later ratified by a VFL inquiry, which suspended the culprits for five seasons each.
The finals saw Carlton's conquerors South Melbourne go down to Collingwood and the Blues, as minor premiers, immediately exercised their right of challenge. Carlton dropped to fourth in , improving slightly to third a year later, but then plummeted down the list to sixth in in Jack Wells' only season as coach.
Under Norman 'Hackenschmidt' Clark, re-appointed coach in after a single season in charge two years earlier, there was a sudden quite dramatic turn around. Despite blooding numerous first year players during the course of the season Carlton headed the ladder after the home and away rounds and went on to win the premiership via the challenge final with a side containing no fewer than nine 'rookies', easily a record.
The Blues ended up in the challenge final after South Melbourne had surprisingly bested them by 19 points in the final but their form a week later was greatly improved. In the first half indeed it looked to be merely a question of 'how much' as Carlton raced to a 5.
Carlton won 6. The recent onset of war in Europe restricted the crowd to just As it was, however, the league controversially elected to continue in , a decision for which Carlton ultimately had much cause to be thankful. After finishing the home and away rounds in second place on the ladder the Blues enjoyed wins over Melbourne by 11 points in a semi final and Fitzroy by 16 points in the final before comfortably downing minor premiers Collingwood Perhaps the unluckiest player afield was Collingwood wingman Tom Clancy who had occupied the same position for Carlton five years previously when the Blues and Collingwood had last met in a challenge final - with the opposite result.
The and seasons saw the VFL limping along on a reduced scale but Carlton maintained involvement both years, finishing second and third. The immediate post world war one period saw football booming as a spectator sport and on 28th August an unparalleled crowd estimated at 51, crammed into Princes Park to witness Carlton's Premierships proved elusive, however. Even after the Blues topped the ladder in consecutive finals defeats by Richmond consigned them to the role of also-rans, incidentally bringing to life a bogey that was to endure for more than half a century.
Many observers at the time considered Carlton's combination to be the greatest in VFL history up to that point not to have managed to claim the premiership. The mid s were particularly inauspicious with Carlton missing the finals for four consecutive years from but as the decade drew to a close there were signs that the team was on the verge of returning to the winners' podium.
However, despite contesting the finals nine times in eleven seasons between and the side repeatedly froze when it mattered more often than not with Richmond providing the opposition. The appointment as coach of Brighton Diggins, a Sandgroper who had been a prominent member of South Melbourne's renowned 'foreign legion' for five seasons, was the catalyst which finally produced the breakthrough Carlton sought.
After topping the ladder in the minor round in Carlton qualified for the grand final with a comfortable 32 point victory over Geelong and once there Diggins' tactical acumen came fully to the fore as the Blues outplayed, outfought, but most significantly of all perhaps, outthought their much more experienced opponents Collingwood to record a stirring point triumph.
An Australian record crowd for a football game of any code of 96, saw, among other things, Carlton ruckman Jim Park successfully commissioned by Diggins to blanket Collingwood's illustrious spearhead Ron Todd, Magpie rovers Fothergill and Pannam having their effectiveness considerably curtailed by Jack Hale and Mick Price, and Blues full-forward Ken Baxter remaining in the goal square all day so as to stymie the counter-attacking threat posed by Collingwood full back Jack Regan, who had little option but to remain close to Baxter.
Diggins was also aware that veteran Collingwood skipper Albert Collier was carrying an injury and instructed the Carlton players to 'go easy' on him in order that he would not be replaced by a fit teammate. Carlton trailed early but recovered to lead at every change by 1, 20 and 22 points before winning There were particularly commendable performances from rover Jack Hale, centre half forward Jack Wrout 4 goals , centreman Cresswell 'Mick' Crisp, ruckman Brighton Diggins, wingman Bob Green, and makeshift full back Jim Park who restricted the aerobatic Todd to just three goals for the game after the Magpie champion had booted 11 against Geelong in the previous week's preliminary final.
Jim Park, who played in a total of senior games for Carlton, was one of two players from the club to die in action during world war two. The other was Jim Knight 15 games. Fred Elliott. Vin Gardiner Lew Holmes. Jim Francis. Bruce Comben. Ken Hands. John Nicholls. Sergio Silvagni George Harris.
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More videos. Injury news. Join All of Us Membership is here! View All Partners. All Rights Reserved. Loading Gallery. Why not share? All Photos. Fullscreen Close. Sir Kenneth Luke, who was club president from to , introduced a professional approach to club administration. By the early s, Carlton was one of the few VFL clubs that was not in a precarious financial position, and the League acted to stabilise the competition by introducing a player draft and salary cap.
The response of John Elliott's administration to these changes left Carlton heavily in debt and subject to heavy punishment by the AFL for salary cap breaches.
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