We’re close to a month away from the 2021 season, but Carlton is yet to crown their 2020 best and fairest.
The 17 other sides went ahead with their showcase nights, some in the same week their seasons ended up in the Queensland hubs.
The Blues however made the opposite call, postponing the event until Saturday February 6th.
Carlton CEO Cain Liddle said they made the call in part so they could send off retiring greats Matthew Kreuzer and Kade Simpson in front of members.
“We made that decision while we were in the hubs last year,” Liddle told SEN Mornings.
“We had two of our greats in Kade Simpson and Matthew Kreuzer both announce their retirements and we put our heads together and we had this real fear that two of our greatest players were going to go out with a bit of a sayonara over a zoom call which no one felt all that comfortable about.
“We made the call at the time, let’s push it back to February and hope things have improved in terms of the virus and our ability to get everyone together.
“As well as wanting to celebrate the 2020 John Nicholls Medallist we also wanted to celebrate those two great careers.
“We took a bit of a punt and to be fair it’s still a bit of a watch and brief. We’re anticipating we’ll be able to get our club together this Saturday night at which point we’ll announce the 2020 John Nicholls Medal winner.
“We’re using a room that can take 1500 and I think government regulations allow us 1000 and our team have elected to reduce that down to 700 to reduce the risk, spread everyone out and try and keep groups segregated.”
Defender Jacob Weitering and second-year midfielder Sam Walsh are the favourites to take out the best and fairest.
Kreuzer and Simpson will be remaining with the Blues in 2021, with the former taking up a coaching role with the men’s side and the latter with the women’s.
Carlton yesterday announced the club was debt free for the first time since 1996.
It was a historic day for a club that was in over $7 million of debt, with the Blues also announcing a membership record of 67,035.
Liddle said it was thanks to those members that they were able to overcome the financial hole.
“We finalised yesterday whereby we’d cleared that historic debt which has been with the club for about 25 years now,” he said.
“It’s interesting I heard a few comments from people last night saying debt is cheap, why would you bother, but when debt involves things that have occurred over 25 years and it isn’t being used to increase your revenues, no debt’s good and we’re very happy to get rid of that.
“It’s almost entirely been driven by our members and to announce a membership record yesterday on the first day of February is quite unprecedented.
“All I can say to our members last year is a huge thank you and we’ve gone to the well already this year and put us in the strongest position we’ve been off the field for a hell of a long time.”
Liddle also confirmed there will be no changes to the gate-sharing split between themselves and Richmond for the Round 1 season opener, despite 2020 being played in an empty MCG.