Essendon forward Peter Wright congratulated by Sam Durham after kicking one of his five goals in his comeback game against Carlton on Sunday night. Photo: GETTY IMAGES

If a week is a long time in footy, then 12 months is an eternity.

That adage could not have been more apparent on Sunday night when arch rivals Carlton and Essendon did battle in the inaugural King’s Birthday eve clash at the MCG.

Supporters from both clubs would’ve looked at the competing teams and thought to themselves that they looked very familiar.

Where had they seen them before?

Ah, yes, that’s right – almost exactly a year previously when the Bombers and Blues last faced each other.

However, unfortunately for Carlton supporters, much like Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd’s characters in the ‘80s comedy Trading Places, the clubs have undergone dramatic role reversals.

In Round 13 last year, it was Essendon which had plummeted to deep and dark depths with seemingly no hope in sight.

Players looked confused out on the field, the game plan was being roundly criticised, off-field tensions were building at board level and serious question marks started hovering over their second-year coach Ben Rutten.

And their horrendous start to the year (in their case, 2-10 after 12 games), was capped off with a meek, apathetic 26-point loss in their big 150-year anniversary match against the old enemy Carlton, serving as the ultimate insult.

At that stage, Carlton, riding a massive wave of momentum and enthusiasm under their first-year coach (Michael Voss), had improved to 9-3 and looked destined for finals footy (before famously falling at the last hurdle against Collingwood in Round 23).

Sound familiar?

All you have to do is swap the names Carlton and Essendon, fast forward to the present day, and you will basically find yourself describing the current fortunes of these two Victorian powerhouses.

It’s as remarkable as it is eerie.

The Bombers are now the ones who have a discernible and recognisable game plan under their first-year coach Brad Scott which has them 8-5 heading into the bye – their best start to a season in a decade – and seemingly on track for the finals. Their last win? A resounding 34-point triumph over Carlton.

Essendon’s players are now the ones who are connected out on the field, look as though they are enjoying their footy and understand the clear instructions that are being given to them by their coach.

Meanwhile, the Blues limp into their meeting with Gold Coast at the MCG on Sunday languishing in the bottom four, like Essendon at the same stage last year, with a woeful 4-8-1 record, having lost eight of their last nine games. Their one win in that period? Against a West Coast team that is performing worse than Fitzroy in its final year.

The parallels between Voss and Rutten are stark as well. Both men employed an exciting, attacking brand of footy in their first year in the job which led to Essendon making the top eight in 2021, and Carlton all but doing so in 2022, before missing out by 0.6 per cent on the final day of the home-and-away season.

In the second year of his Essendon tenure, Rutten opted to focus more heavily on defence, but went too far with his over-correction, and it looks as though Voss has done exactly the same thing this year at Carlton in his second year. Whether Voss suffers the same fate as Rutten last year remains to be seen.

The Blues’ fall from grace has been as stunning as Essendon’s climb back up the ladder. Did anyone pick any of this before the season started?

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The Bombers’ path to this position that they currently find themselves in started in August last year with their shambolic handling of Rutten’s sacking.

It’s not very often that a club admits it is actively courting another person to be its future senior coach (Alastair Clarkson) while its current senior coach is still in the job and hasn’t been sacked yet.

It was incredibly undignified.

However, there was a big silver lining in Rutten’s eventual dismissal, and that was the civil war that occurred in Essendon’s boardroom which saw David Barham become president while his predecessor Paul Brasher, CEO Xavier Campbell and other board members Simon Madden, Peter Allen and Sean Wellman all departed.

It served as a long overdue broom that swept through the joint, importantly leading to fresh air and ideas enveloping the board table.

The new regime got off to a bumpy start with its embarrassing one-day appointment of CEO Andrew Thorburn, but they eventually landed on the highly-credentialed and respected Craig Vozzo from West Coast as Campbell’s permanent successor.

But most importantly of all, the turmoil the club found itself in led to the hiring of Scott as senior coach, after being plucked from the AFL after three years as the league’s football operations boss, having coached North Melbourne for almost 10 years previously.

It might have been clumsily handled, but the widespread changes the club made under Barham were desperately required, and the ends look as though they have justified the means.

In the last 10 months, apart from a little squabble involving long-time recruiter Adrian Dodoro and footy manager Josh Mahoney, we haven’t heard one peep from The Hangar from an off-field perspective.

It must be such a refreshing change for Essendon’s long-suffering fans who have basically only known crisis and tumult for the better part of the last decade.

With Essendon enjoying off-field stability, which the club has been crying out for for so long, it’s little wonder that the Bombers have been performing so well so far this season.

For the first time in a very long time, everyone from the top down is on the same page and pulling in the same direction. It’s arguably the most important ingredient for success.

The playing list has hardly changed from 2022, but they are now clearly enjoying coming to work and thriving in a stable environment and it has led to the Bombers producing the most consistent three months of footy since 2013. Every week, you know exactly what you’re going to get from Essendon, which has been very rare in its recent history.

On the contrary, Carlton now finds itself once again slipping into another crisis. The board is not united, with former member Craig Mathieson departing recently, president Luke Sayers finds himself under enormous scrutiny as the former CEO of PricewaterhouseCoopers during the time of the much-publicised tax scandal, the pressure on Voss continues to build, the players look lost on the field and the Blues are currently 15th on the ladder – above only Hawthorn, North Melbourne and West Coast who are all waist-deep in their respective rebuilds.

If the Essendon case study is anything to go by, the Blues might not have any choice but to learn from their hated rival and enact dramatic change once again as they scramble to strike while the iron is hot with what appears to be a very talented list.