The 2017 Carlton Football Club season was the Carlton Football Club's 154th season of competition.
It was the club's men's team's 121st season as a member of the Australian Football League. The team finished sixteenth out of eighteen teams in the 2017 AFL season with a winâÂÂloss record of 6âÂÂ16.
The season saw the inauguration of the club's women's team, which contested its first season as a member of the AFL Women's competition. The team finished fourth out of eight teams in the 2017 AFL Women's season with a 3âÂÂ3âÂÂ1 record from seven games.
The 2017 AFL season was the 121st season of the VFL/AFL competition since its inception in 1897; and, having competed in every season, it was also the 121st season contested by the Carlton Football Club. Carlton continued its alignment with the Northern Blues in the Victorian Football League, allowing Carlton-listed players to play with the Northern Blues when not selected in AFL matches. Carlton's primary home ground continued to be the Melbourne Cricket Ground, with the club playing six home matches there and five at Etihad Stadium; traditional home ground Ikon Park continued to serve as the training and administrative base.
The club also fielded its women's team in the inaugural season of the AFL Women's competition, running in February and March. Carlton was one of four Victorian clubs granted a license in June 2016 for the eight-team competition. Ikon Park served as the home ground for women's matches.
The club's membership was 50,326, a 0.3% increase on the 2016 season. Car manufacturer Hyundai continued as one of the club's two major sponsorship partners in 2017, having been a major sponsor continuously since 2008. The club's second major sponsorship partner at the beginning of the season was job seekers' services provider CareerOne, which was in the final year of a three-year deal; however, the company withdrew from the sponsorship during May after cash flow difficulties related to a federal government audit of one of its clients. In late May, the club signed airline Virgin Australia, which was already in a secondary level sponsorship deal with the club, as the replacement for CareerOne, with the Virgin logo replacing the CareerOne logo on the team's guernseys from Round 10 onwards. The club posted a $700,000 profit for the year, its first profit since the 2013 season.
Mark LoGiudice continued as club president, a role he had held since June 2014. Marc Murphy continued in the role of captain for the fifth season; Kade Simpson remained vice-captain. There was one change to the club's seven-man leadership group, with Dennis Armfield elevated to the group to fill the position left by the retirement of Andrew Walker, and Ed Curnow, Bryce Gibbs, Patrick Cripps and Sam Docherty holding their places. Former women's exhibition series senior coach Damien Keeping joined the club as the coach of the women's team.
The following is Carlton's squad for the 2017 season.
Statistics are correct as of end of 2017 season. Flags represent the state of origin, i.e. the state in which the player played his Under-18s football.
The following summarises all player changes which have occurred since the conclusion of the 2016 season. Unless otherwise noted, draft picks refer to selections in the 2016 AFL draft.
Two high-profile players requested trades away from Carlton in the lead-up to the trade period: Zach Tuohy and Bryce Gibbs. Gibbs was two years into a five-year contract, but sought a return to Adelaide for family reasons, nominating the Adelaide Crows as his preferred destination. Tuohy, out of contract but not a free agent, nominated as his preferred destination. Carlton was also linked to young out-of-contract defender Caleb Marchbank, who was seeking to return to his home state Victoria and nominated Carlton as his preferred destination. In the end, deals were secured for Tuohy and Marchbank, but Carlton and Adelaide could not come to an agreement on a trade for Gibbs and he remained on the Carlton list.
The club played three practice matches as part of the JLT Community Series.
The club entered the season continuing to rebuild its playing list under a youth policy, and thus despite having won seven games in 2016, the club was expected to fare poorly, with about half of all pundits across the major newspapers and media outlets predicting the club would finish last. The club eventually finished with a 6âÂÂ16 record, one fewer win than in 2016, to finish sixteenth, one win and percentage ahead of wooden spooners .
As in 2016, the club was stronger in the first half of the year than the second, sitting with winâÂÂloss records of 3âÂÂ4 after Round 7 and 4âÂÂ7 after Round 13, before winning only one of its final ten games. The club's winâÂÂloss formline when compared to its opponents' finishing position was unusually erratic, with the club finishing:
Carlton was usually able to keep close in its games, and led at least ten minutes into the final quarter in eight of its sixteen losses.
As in 2016, the team's strength was built on its defence, with the club continuing to build its backline with the recruitment of Caleb Marchbank from , the conversion of Liam Jones from a fringe key forward to a dominant key defender, and the continued growth of rebounder Sam Docherty, who was selected in the All-Australian team. Its biggest weakness was its inability to score, and the club was the lowest-scoring in the league (having been second-lowest in 2016 behind suspension-affected ) and failed to score 100 points in any game for the first time since 1917.
The Carlton Football Club Best and Fairest awards night took place on 22 September. The John Nicholls Medal, for the best and fairest player of the club, as well as several other awards, were presented on the night.
The winner of the John Nicholls Medal was Marc Murphy, who polled 174 votes to beat 2016 winner Sam Docherty (169 votes) and Matthew Kreuzer (164 votes). It was Murphy's second John Nicholls Medal, having first won the medal six years earlier in 2011. Matthew Kreuzer's third placing was the best performance of this career, and he also swept the coterie group awards. Also notable was the ninth-placing of Liam Jones, who in his first season as a defender polled 84 votes from only twelve games â a votes-per-game average which would have been high enough for fourth place had been played the entire season â and the seventh- and tenth-placings of Lachie Plowman and Charlie Curnow, who reached the count's top ten for the first times in their careers.
The following other awards were presented on John Nicholls Medal night:-
Levi Casboult was Carlton's leading goalkicker for the season with 34 goals. It was Casboult's only time finishing as the club's leading goalkicker, after having been the second highest goalkicker in 2015 and 2016. 2016 leading goalkicker Matthew Wright was second.
Five Carlton players were nominated for the 2017 AFL Rising Star award. This was the most ever nominated in a single season in the club, exceeding the three players nominated in 2003. Two of those players polled votes in the final count: Charlie Curnow, who was fourth with 27 votes, and Sam Petrevski-Seton, who was sixth with 3 votes. The nominees were:
The following Carlton players were selected for representative teams during the 2017 season.
For each of the AFLPA awards, one or three Carlton players were nominated by an internal vote of Carlton players; Marc Murphy was also nominated for the Best Captain award by default. Sam Petrevski-Seton placed third for the best first-year player award.
Under the competition's player recruitment regulations, each of the eight clubs was entitled to sign two marquee players. In July 2016, Carlton recruited St Kilda Sharks key position/midfielder and former Australian international soccer goalkeeper Brianna Davey and Darebin Falcons full forward Darcy Vescio as its marquee players. Darebin midfielder Lauren Arnell also signed with the club as a priority signing due to her pre-existing relationship with the club as its Female Football Ambassador. The club drew most of its remaining recruits from the inaugural AFL Women's draft, with Cranbourne forward Bianca Jakobsson taken with Carlton's first round selection at No. 3 overall. Arnell was made the inaugural captain of the team, with Davey and Madeline Keryk serving as vice-captains.
The following is the final senior squad as announced at the start of the season. Numbers in parentheses represent games played and goals kicked for Carlton in the season. Only supplementary players who played a senior match during the season are listed.
The club played each of the other seven clubs once in the home-and-away series of the inaugural AFL Women's fixture over February and March. The main highlight of the fixture was the Round 1 match against Collingwood, which saw the two traditional men's rivals play the first match in the new competition's history. The match, for which admission was free, drew a lockout crowd of 24,568 at Ikon Park, after having originally been scheduled for Collingwood's 5,000-capacity Olympic Park training oval then being transferred due to the expected crowd. The team's Round 4, 5 and 6 matches against Melbourne, Fremantle and the Western Bulldogs served as curtain-raisers to the senior team's pre-season practice matches against the same clubs.
The club finished fourth out of eight on the ladder, with a final record of 3âÂÂ3âÂÂ1.
The following individual awards were won by Carlton players:
The Carlton Football Club had a full affiliation with the Northern Blues during the 2017 season. It was the fifteenth season of the clubs' affiliation, which had been in place since 2003. Carlton senior- and rookie-listed players who were not selected to play in the Carlton team were eligible to play for either the Northern Blues seniors or reserves team in the Victorian Football League. The club's nine home matches were split with six matches at the VFL club's traditional home ground Preston City Oval, and three matches at Carlton's traditional home ground Ikon Park. The Northern Blues finished 9th out of 15 in the VFL with a record of 8âÂÂ10 to miss the finals on percentage by 8.1%pts.