Brendon Bolton personified Carlton’s one-time future, under-fire list manager Stephen Silvagni its past. Photo: AFL MEDIA

Carlton is stuck in limbo, a club fumbling through the pre-dawn darkness as it waits impatiently for the sun to rise on its rebuild.

Having almost outrun its flawed former self, the club has stopped to take a breath and realised its shiny new identity is not there waiting. Brendon Bolton’s sacking is the breath. A decision that is emblematic of the confusion which pervades Ikon Park.

Bolton had to go, that’s the simple part. His dismal win-loss record decided his ultimate fate, but it was his inability to turn the page on uncompetitive defeats that expedited his dismissal. And yet in leaving, he has taken with him the idea of what the new Carlton was meant to look like.

Here was a club looking to recreate itself in the image of an uber-earnest (self-described) “country boy from Tassie”. But if Bolton had personified Carlton’s one-time future, under-fire list manager Stephen Silvagni and football director Chris Judd represent throwbacks to its past.

Again, confusion rears its ugly head.

A wildly successful club fallen on harder times is wont to revel in its glory days as a distraction from a grimmer reality. And no club did glory quite like the Blues.

Carlton’s history is the richest of tapestries. A long line of superstars interwoven with iconic moments, and premierships, lots of them. Fuelled by insatiable ambition and a brimming war chest, the Blues stopped at nothing in their pursuit of success.

For a long time the club’s relentless trophy hunting was celebrated. Even outside the club, there was a begrudging acceptance of Carlton’s roguish commercialism. Then, of course, it all came crashing down amidst the salary cap penalties from which the club is yet to fully recover.

The navy blue swagger of yesteryear was replaced with an awkward self-consciousness. The short-termism that defined the old Carlton way has been rejected as part of the club’s ongoing scorched-earth rebuild.

A triumphant past giving way to a confused legacy.

It’s when viewed through this lens that one can appreciate the tension between Silvagni and Judd as favourite sons on the one hand, and ghosts of a past the club is trying to leave behind on the other.

Silvagni’s association with the John Elliott brown paper bag era and Judd’s controversial Visy contract from his playing days only adds to this sense of conflict.

Of course, such critical analysis owes in large part to Carlton’s on-field struggles and the question of Silvagni and Judd’s culpability.

But the spotlight on the duo has been made brighter by the club’s leadership void. That president Mark LoGiudice remains an unconvincing figurehead and CEO Cain Liddle a relative “newbie” has forced Silvagni and Judd to confront the high profile administrator-seeking hordes.
And the head scratching is not limited to off-field matters. The state of the Blues’ playing list is a source of yet more confusion.

Such is the prodigious talent of the likes of Patrick Cripps, Charlie Curnow and Sam Walsh that one could be forgiven for thinking time is the only thing standing in the way of the club’s future success. That or the nagging feeling that they headline a shallow list that will forever shackle them.

In any event, Cripps stands as a beacon of certainty amidst Carlton’s sea of ambivalence. As if a reminder was necessary, Cripps’ one man crusade against the Lions last weekend was an embodiment of everything the club would like to be.

But it will take more than just Cripps to forge Carlton’s new identity.

And that’s why the club’s looming coaching appointment is as significant as any other decision that has confronted this humbled old aristocrat. The Blues don’t just need a coach, they need a personality.

Right now, Carlton is a blank canvas waiting for a coach to provide the perfect splash of blue.