After three-and-a-half years at Carlton, Brendon Bolton's tenure as head coach is no more.
The 40-year-old was sacked on Monday morning, following the Blues' dismal loss to arch-rivals Essendon by 41 points on Sunday afternoon.
The loss left the Blues sitting 18th on the ladder, having recorded only one win for the year.
MORE: Jimmy Bartel slams AFL after another score review disaster | AFL Coleman Medal leaderboard
It ultimately was the final nail in the coffin for Bolton, who after coaching Carlton in 77 games, was given his marching orders by club officials.
The day begun with reports that Carlton president Mark LoGiudice and head of football Brad Lloyd had met Monday morning in the former's Queen Street office.
Carlton CEO Cain Liddle then arrived at Ikon Park later Monday morning, telling reporters that "we’ll let you know (Bolton's future) as soon as we do."
Carlton CEO Cain Liddle has just arrived at Ikon Park.
— Mitch Cleary (@cleary_mitch) June 3, 2019
Q: Cain, has anything changed in the last 24 hrs?
A: “We’ll let you know as soon as we do.” @AFLcomau
The sacking of Bolton comes only weeks after president Mark LoGiudice and football director Chris Judd publicly backed Bolton, following a dreadful loss to North Melbourne, and then a 93 point demolition job at the hands of GWS a fortnight later.
With Bolton now gone, it means he is the second coaching casualty this year, following Brad Scott resigning from the North Melbourne job only a week ago.
There is speculation around the role the players have had in Bolton's sacking, with journalist Sam McClure speculating that it is possible Bolton had lost his playing group.
“I wonder what role the players have had in this. The term gets thrown around – has the coach lost the players? I’m not saying that’s happened, but the people you talk to at the club think Bolton has a great tactical mind, he’s a great teacher, he’s great at dealing with people one-on-one, he’s heavily invested,” McClure told SEN.
“Potentially has he wound up players too tightly and what I mean by that is you can see the desire of players not wanting to make a mistake. You can read it in their body language.
“They look like a golfer with the yips.”
Carlton supporter and SEN Afternoons host Andy Maher said that he felt like the decision had been a quick reaction.
“There were things starting to maybe get discussed towards the end of last week and it was all contingent on the performance against Essendon and such was the nature of the performance – it just seemed like they were stuck in second gear," Maher said.
“I feel like the joint is stuck at the moment. They feel like all of the intentions are right, they feel like they’ve done a lot of things correctly, I feel like they feel they’ve got a lot of things in place off the field and around the footy department, but for some reason the whole thing has just stalled and they’ve got a bit twitchy about that.
“They can’t wait to see if the thing can correct itself.”
Bolton finishes his coaching tenure at the Blues with a winning percentage of only 20.78%, winning 16 out of 77 games. The last 43 games for Bolton only saw a total of four wins.
