1984

Carlton entered the season with a new Captain, Wayne Johnston, and would start the season in great form with a 137 point spanking of North Melbourne in Round 1. North would eventually only win five games for the season and avoid the wooden spoon by percentage, so in hindsight this win was against one of the season's poorer teams.

While the Blues didn't lose more than 2 games in a row during the season, it also only won 3 games in a row once. Unlike 1983 the club would be consistently in the top 5 of the ladder, by the end of Round 10 the club would be in third place, a position they would maintain through to the end of the season. While this seems to be an improvement over the fifth place finish of the previous year, the club's win loss is exactly the same over both seasons (13 wins and 9 losses). Our improvement in ladder position was mainly due to the fact that Essendon and Hawthorn were dominant during the season, causing a large gap between the top 2 teams and the rest.

After finishing third, Carlton earnt a double chance and played Hawthorn in the Qualifying Final in the first week of finals action. The Hawks jumped out to a three goal quarter time lead and were never headed, eventually running out 5 goal winners (18.14 122 to 13.14 92).

The loss would send the Blues into a Semi Final against Collingwood the following week. After a tight first half the Pies established a 10 point lead, but a 5 goal to none third quarter effectively ended the game as a contest. Carlton were gallant in the last quarter and kicked 6 goals, but could only reduce the deficit to 25 points. This was the fourth time that we lost 2 consecutive games in 1984, and it would end our season. The club was officially ranked fourth for the season.

In the end fourth was probably a fair reflection of the abilities of the team. Carlton had played competition pace setters Hawthorn 3 times and Essendon 2 times, losing all 5 of these games. With the exception of the Round 19 12 point loss to Essendon, we didn't finish within 5 goals of these clubs. The Blues simply weren't in the same class during the 1984 season.

Ladder

People of 1984

Captain: Wayne Johnston
Coach: David Parkin
Leading Goal-kicker: Warren Ralph - 55 goals
Best & Fairest: Bruce Doull - 4th win after 1974, 1977 and 1980

Debuts

Round 22: Mick Kennedy
Round 14: Ian Muller
Round 11: Peter Dean
Round 1: Warren Ralph, Fraser Murphy, David Honybun, Wayne Blackwell, Tom Alvin