Gerard Whateley has given his flinch reaction to Carlton’s decision to sack David Teague.
Teague is gone after two and a half years at the helm.
Read Whateley’s thoughts below:
“How to feel about it … I don’t know if this is the right decision or not,” he told SEN’s Whateley.
“So coming into the year it was my view that 2021 wasn’t the season of judgement for David Teague and there was a core of (fans) who told me straight up that I was wrong about that.
“Carlton had declared by their own hand that the time for development was over. They had recruited to contend, to move into the eight and start contending.
“When they started to play there was an obvious defensive flaw in their game. David Teague after the Essendon game won a thrilling shootout and said their best was as good as anyone’s, but that was just rhetoric.
“June 12, the incoming president decides to enact a review. The outgoing president says the review is not about the coach, but these reviews are always about the coach.
“Teague spoke around still having faith in Carlton, still having faith in the team he was preparing, but as time moved on it was clear the club no longer had faith in him.
“The last two weeks, he knew he was out, he carried himself with great dignity and delivered a few home truths around where Carlton didn’t meet the markers of high performance in elite sport and the lack of support he’d been given along the way.
“Then by Saturday night he was talking about the job in the past tense.
“The years that he coached. Half a season after Brendon Bolton, he won the job. His coaching won the job. It was the Carlton community that anointed the Teague train and the players played a role in him becoming the permanent coach.
“The next year is the COVID interrupted season where they’re not good enough to make the eight after hanging around the fringes.
“And then Carlton decrees the time for development is over and that is a mistake that the club owns. It owns the mistake of its recruiting and it owns the mistakes of overestimating what they were going to be capable of.
“David Teague pays the price for that at the end. I don’t know whether it’s the right decision or not.
“What I do know is this is not the dignified way to remove a coach from his job.”
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