Carlton’s finals hopes likely went up in smoke on Sunday afternoon, losing to an injury ravaged West Coast side.
The Blues are 0-7 against the current top eight sides and they are only percentage out of the bottom four.
Kane Cornes has accused Carlton players of playing a “selfish” brand of football and believes that falls on coach David Teague.
“If you had said to the Blues fans that at Round 12 their season would be finished on the back of the hype around the pre-season, you would’ve fallen off your chair,” Cornes told SEN Breakfast.
“I would have, I thought they would play finals this year. I had them in my eight. Their season is over at Round 12.
“(If I was David Teague) I would have said (post-match) we are a selfish group.
“If you go and watch what Melbourne is doing when they don’t have the ball and look at how many players are pointing, are guarding, are communicating with each other, are making it harder for the opposition to transition the ball. Then do that for Carlton.
“I want to hear less about execution. I want to hear more about team footy. It’s about what they do when they don’t have it. I want to hear more language from David Teague about how disappointing that has been.
“It starts at selection. You need to reward players doing it during the game and players that aren’t … I saw Marc Murphy have a goal kicked on him. He’s playing at half-forward, the ball turns over and (Luke Foley) kicks his first goal.
“Murphy is just switched off as the ball turns over. His defender runs off him and kicks a goal from outside 50.
“Little things like that you have to punish at selection. I’m not sure David Teague could say they have any selection integrity at the moment.
“I still think the team is being picked on reputation. Once you start rewarding those selfless actions, players work out what they need to do. It needs to start there now.”
Tim Watson added that the Blues were “smashed” around the ball by a West Coast midfield missing both Tim Kelly and Luke Shuey.
The Eagles won the clearances 37-24 and centre clearances 15-9, with Nic Naitanui, Dom Sheed and Elliot Yeo combining for 25.
“I was confident Carlton was going to win that game yesterday because of the desperation, because of the players the Eagles were missing, but the Eagles out-powered Carlton with the ball, they defended better as a team, they created more attacking drive,” Watson said.
“There were holes all over the ground when they wanted to move the ball. In terms of the way they’ve been set up to play.
“I think this is the area David Teague, he needs to improve that part of the way they play. What he does and doesn’t accept is what coaching is all about.
“As soon as Harry McKay went off the ground yesterday, if you look at their forward line structure and the way they were trying to get the ball and score goals, it was so haphazard and they weren’t able to change that because they lost that one player and they weren’t able to configure another way to play.
“They got smashed around the ball and you’re desperate, you’re playing against West Coast. That was the part of the game I thought they were going to take away from the Eagles, but the longer it went the more power West Coast had around the ball.”
Garry Lyon sees similarities between where the Blues currently sit and where Melbourne was last year.
“I see a fair bit of this Carlton group in Melbourne of yesteryear. Melbourne always had these star players in this group, but they weren’t getting any team success,” he said.
“Individually they were All-Australians and being well recognised, but collectively they weren’t.
“Now you look at this Carlton side, they’ve got Sam Walsh who’s a Brownlow contender, you’ve got Jacob Weitering one of the best fullbacks in the competition, you’ve got Harry McKay leading the Coleman Medal.
“You’ve got the individuals and they’re getting their recognition individually, but not collectively.
“The irony is Melbourne players stopped worrying about individual awards and now eight of them would be in the All-Australian team.
“That’s where Carlton needs to get to.”
The Blues will have the chance to evaluate where the season is at this week, heading into the bye.