Charlie Curnow was let off too easily for jumping ship
With about half an hour to go before last year’s trade period deadline, as player manager Tom Petroro began to resemble financial analyst Tom Piotrowski, Michael Voss phoned Charlie Curnow.The deal was unlikely to go through, the Carlton coach told him.Curnow would have to suck it up, mend some bridges, say all the right things and commit to the Blues again.Within a few minutes, however, he was a star in someone else’s sky.The Sydney players they traded him for were on holiday in South America, and took a call from their now former coach.
“They pretty much just said we want you out,” Ollie Florent told afl,com,au,“It probably could’ve been handled better,” Will Hayward said,It was nearly a decade since Curnow had arrived at Carlton.
The late Michael Turner told a story of how he urged clubs to take him as the No 1 selection in the 2015 draft.He was most insistent with Adrian Dodoro at Essendon, who had picks five and six and were coming off probably the worst year in their history.“No worries, son,” Dodoro told him, before selecting Darcy Parish at five and Aaron Francis at six.Curnow slipped to pick 12, and was popular with Carlton fans straight away.Yes, some of his injuries were straight from the Frank Spencer school of self-sabotage.
But the Carlton crowd, inured towards a glass-half-empty view of proceedings, would cackle with optimism whenever he was on a tear.In an honest but limited team, he was their point of difference, their energiser.“This group started from day one together, we want to continue to grow together and ultimately we want to earn success together,” Curnow said in August 2022, extending his contract for another six years.Just 48 hours later, against Collingwood, Carlton suffered one of the most heartbreaking losses of the Voss era.Curnow’s game that day was a snapshot of his career – astonishing one moment, a bit breezy and headless the next.
If he was a golfer, he’d have a sublime swing, the ability to reel off half a dozen birdies in a row, and lousy course management.It’s a career that has never quite delivered on the promise or hype.When he won his second Coleman medal in 2023, nearly a quarter of his goals came against the abysmal West Coast.He struggled to have an impact in all three finals that year.In 2025, when the rot really set in, he went goalless for a month.
Most things said or written in the lead up to trade period may as well be AI generated.Curnow’s comment, “I’m playing at Carlton next year.There you go.Done,” should be treated accordingly.We’re entitled, however, to criticise the way he handled himself.
He called his move to Sydney “a change of scenery”.But he wasn’t a 70-year-old retiring to Noosa.He was a contracted player being paid astronomical money.In the current market, we end up shrugging our shoulders and saying words to the effect of, “It is what it is,” and, “That’s the footy landscape these days.” But that lets players like Curnow off too easily.
Supporters invest emotionally in a player, fork out money to watch him, and cut him a lot of slack,They listen to him say how much their support means, how proud he is to represent the jumper, and how he would never, under any circumstances, go elsewhere,Suddenly he’s a Sydney player, standing on defenders’ heads, being laced out by some of the best kicks in the country, and waxing lyrical about the Bondi lifestyle and the Bloods culture,The Swans have a history of getting the best out of players like Curnow,And there was nothing surer than the AFL scheduling Sydney and Carlton to open the season.
His former teammate, his footballing polar opposite, and the best man equipped to handle him, was squashed in the state of origin game and may not get to the line.If Sydney’s social media clips are any indication, Curnow may feast on whoever mans him.But in the long term, Carlton will be better off without his gravitational draw.Every footballer exits their club differently.Some, like Kade Simpson and Sam Docherty, spill their guts for their team and are remembered as fondly as any premiership player.
Some, like Christian Petracca and Clayton Oliver, leave on a sour note but remain cherished players for previous deeds done,Some, like Jack Steele, leave for better opportunities with nothing but respect,And some, like Curnow, opt for a “change of scenery”,Carlton’s captain, coach, chief executive, head of football and the player – Sam Walsh – signing an eight-year contract extension all did media interviews this week,All took thinly veiled swipes at their former full forward, a player they nurtured, protected and defended, a player who jumped ship when it all got too hard.
While injuries have hampered the midfielder’s last few years, the Blues did not let that stop them locking the 25-year-old in on a long-term deal.“I’ve been doing all the work and we play in a tough sport so if that’s to come I know I’m going to be strong enough to bounce back,” Walsh said of worrying about getting injured.Curnow was always accident prone.As a kid, he split his head open when he dived Greg Louganis-style into a reef at Bells Beach.Another time, he fell off a horse and dislocated his elbow.
Early in his career, he had the usual injuries that come with being a big man with a tendency to throw his body around recklessly.But it was a relatively innocuous injury against Fremantle in late 2019 that really did him in.The club thought his knee injury would keep him out for a fortnight.But it was complicated when he dislocated the kneecap playing a game of backyard basketball.It was further exacerbated when he slipped on some tiles climbing the stairs at home.
And it all went up the spout when he hurt himself deadlifting on the family farm,Each Carlton press release was released through increasingly pursed lips,Curnow ended up missing more than two years of footy,Responding to the news that AFL umpires will be able to access some match statistics before deciding their Brownlow votes this year, the former Fremantle player told Sunrise it would be “helpful to take the pressure off the umpires”,But the two-time Brownlow medallist thinks it is important to have an element of “humanness” in the count.
“A few anomalies here and there maybe is not the worst thing,” he said.The AFL’s head of football performance, Greg Swann, sought to emphasise that accessing statistics would not change the “essence” of the award.“It is the subjective opinion of the field umpires that will determine the voting for the award and the umpires are acutely aware of the importance of the award and the standing in which Brownlow medallists are held in the game,” Swann said.“I wanted to retire,” Izak Rankine told the Tommy Talks podcast this week.The Adelaide Crows star was banned for four matches at the end of the 2025 season for using a homophobic slur.
“It was tough and then to be put on your arse like that … and you start to question who you are, and you start to question what you’ve been doing and how you’ve been acting and who you’ve been hanging around with and what has been really going on,” Rankine said.Any thoughts you want to share? Reply to this email or send your views to fromthepocket@theguardian.com.Who has kicked the most goals in their VFL/AFL debut? Bonus if you know how many they booted.Answers in next week’s newsletter, but if you think you know it, hit reply and let me know.
Last week’s answer: What grand final honour do Lachie Neale, Harris Andrews, Jack Gunston and Gary Ablett Jr all share? They are Norm Smith medal runners-up.Congratulations to Rowan Sweeney, who was first to reply with the right answer and added that all but Gunston also finished second to a player who won multiple Norm Smith medals.Reply to this email and drop me a line, or email fromthepocket@theguardian.com.Have a friend who might? Forward this to them, or tell them how to get it.
‘People yearn for stability’: the Thames Water sewage plant at frontline of its crisis
It is a grey day in a wet week but one of Thames Water’s neglected plants is still coping. Wastewater is being pumped into the vast Maple Lodge sewage treatment centre in Rickmansworth, just off the M25, at a rate of about 3,000 litres a second, within capacity.The site manager points out the first-line screens that catch everything that will not pass through a 5mm filter. A “sheep” – a bundle of wet wipes, sanitary pads, cotton buds, condoms and indigestible bits of sweetcorn – is rotating at one edge. Credit cards and false teeth have been known to end up here
Criminals ‘systematically’ targeting UK shops, costing £400m last year, say retailers
Criminal gangs are “systematically” targeting shops, retailers have warned, with 5.5m incidents of shoplifting detected last year, costing the industry an estimated £400m.The British Retail Consortium (BRC) has warned over “endemic” violence towards shop workers – who faced an average 36 incidents of violence involving a weapon every day last year – and said high levels of theft was causing “anxiety” among retail staff.Helen Dickinson, the chief executive of the BRC, called on police to consistently prioritise tackling retail crime and commit “dedicated resourcing” to the problem.The BRC research comes after the government put forward new legislation to back a stand-alone offence for assaulting a retail worker and to remove a £200 threshold for “low level” theft, which has a maximum six-month custodial sentence
Crypto exchange Binance may have funded Iranian entities, reports say
Shortly after Donald Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the Binance founder, last fall, company employees revealed the cryptocurrency exchange may have funded Iranian entities with billions of dollars, according to a report by the New York Times.The discovery was made by a group of internal Binance investigators, who reportedly found that people in Iran had accessed more than 1,500 accounts on the crypto platform. Two of those accounts allegedly saw $1.7bn move to Iranian-backed groups that included Yemen’s Houthi militants throughout 2024 and 2025, according to the Wall Street Journal.The company investigators say they reported those transactions to Binance’s executives, but then were reportedly disciplined
Progress on gender equality at top of UK’s biggest firms ‘achingly slow’
Campaigners have bemoaned the “achingly slow” progress made on gender equality at the top of Britain’s biggest businesses, as research showed blue-chip firms had missed key targets and there were only nine female bosses at FTSE 100 companies.The average number of female FTSE 100 chief executives did not move last year, according to the government-backed FTSE Women Leaders Review.They were Allison Kirkby at BT, Zoë Yujnovich at National Grid, Milena Mondini de Focatiis at Admiral, Stella David at Entain, Louise Beardmore at United Utilities, Margherita Della Valle at Vodafone, Amanda Blanc at Aviva and Cindy Rose at WPP.The report also considered Emma Walmsley at GSK and Liv Garfield at Severn Trent, although both women left their roles in December, as well as Carol Howe, the interim chief executive of BP, who is due to be replaced by Meg O’Neill in April.Debra Crew left the drinks group Diageo last summer after two years in which the company’s share price dropped more than 40%
Trump threatens ‘more powerful and obnoxious’ tariffs, amid confusion in UK and EU; Wall Street drops – as it happened
Donald Trump has declared that he can use tariffs in a ‘much more powerful and obnoxious way’ than he has thus far.Posting on his Truth Social network, the US president again attacked the supreme court for ruling against his sweeping global tariffs last Friday – calling them ‘incompetent’.He also claims the justices have ‘‘accidentally and unwittingly’ expanded his presidential powers on tariffs.Trump writes:double quotation markThe supreme court (will be using lower case letters for a while based on a complete lack of respect!*) of the United States accidentally and unwittingly gave me, as President of the United States, far more powers and strength than I had prior to their ridiculous, dumb, and very internationally divisive ruling.For one thing, I can use Licenses to do absolutely “terrible” things to foreign countries, especially those countries that have been RIPPING US OFF for many decades, but incomprehensibly, according to the ruling, can’t charge them a License fee - BUT ALL LICENSES CHARGE FEES, why can’t the United States do so? You do a license to get a fee! The opinion doesn’t explain that, but I know the answer! The court has also approved all other Tariffs, of which there are many, and they can all be used in a much more powerful and obnoxious way, with legal certainty, than the Tariffs as initially used
Stock markets stumble as global trade faces more Trump tariff uncertainty
Stock markets stumbled on Monday as Donald Trump pushed ahead with fresh tariffs on the US’s trading partners despite a supreme court strike-down and growing opposition from domestic voters.Uncertainty over the status of global trade deals spooked investors, triggering a drop in US shares prices including on the Dow Jones industrial average, which tumbled 1.6% by Monday’s closing. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 fell 1.4% and 1
Harry Brook’s 50-ball century blazes England past Pakistan into T20 World Cup semi-finals
US hockey was bathed in a golden Olympic glow. Then Donald Trump and Kash Patel stepped in | Beau Dure
‘I felt tears welling in my eyes’: our readers’ Winter Olympics highlights
The Breakdown | Six Nations half-term report: France are flying while England’s decline is steep
If you think politics shaped these Winter Olympics, just wait until LA 2028
Australia beat India by six wickets in first women’s cricket one-day international – as it happened