1972 Carlton Football Club season

George Harris continued as club president through 1972, a position he had held since after the 1964 season.[2]

Following the 1971 season, Ron Barassi stepped down as coach; at the time, he left to focus on his business career, although he ultimately returned to VFL coaching (at North Melbourne) after only a year.[3] Barassi had coached Carlton for seven seasons, and led the team to two senior premierships: 1968 and 1970. John Nicholls, who had been captain since mid-1968, took on Barassi's former role to become captain-coach.[2]

Carlton played three practice matches during March 1972 – including, as it turned out, matches against both of the teams it would face in Grand Finals later in the year: Richmond and North Adelaide. Carlton won all three practice matches.

Carlton finished the home-and-away season as the minor premiers in 1972, with a win–loss record of 18–3–1. The team sat as low as 6th after Round 4 with a record of 2–1–1, but lost only two of its remaining eighteen matches for the season, moving up to and holding first place from Round 12 until the end of the season. Two of Carlton's three losses were by fewer than six points; a 31-point loss against Richmond in Round 14 was the worst performance of the home-and-away season.

Despite the strong performance, Carlton was in a constant fight for the minor premiership with Richmond, who finished with a record of 18–4–0. Richmond drew within half a game of Carlton after beating them in Round 14; both teams then won all of their remaining eight matches, maintaining that half-game margin until the end of the season. Carlton came very close to losing the minor premiership in the final round, eventually beating Footscray by three points with the significant assistance of Footscray's inaccurate goalkicking .[12]

Under the new McIntyre Final Five, Carlton had a bye in the first week of finals, before playing qualifying final winner Richmond in the second semi-final. In a low-scoring match, Carlton held Richmond to only one goal in the first half, but Richmond was able to fight back and level the scores at 8.13 (61); Alex Jesaulenko had an unlikely set shot from 70m after the final siren to attempt win the game, but did not make the distance.[14] The match was replayed the following weekend, and Carlton suffered its heaviest loss of the season, by 41 points. In the preliminary final against St Kilda, Carlton overcome an 11-point half-time deficit to win by 16 points, and to progress to the Grand Final.

Entering the Grand Final, Richmond was the strong favourite, with bookmakers offering odds of 1–2. Richmond had a record of 11–0–1 from its last twelve games, and had a record of 3–0–1 in its four games against Carlton for the season, including inflicting Carlton's heaviest two losses. Some commentators thought Carlton was impressive enough against St Kilda to be a chance at winning, but most tipped Richmond for the premiership.[15] In an unprecedentedly high scoring game, Carlton kicked eight goals in the first quarter and ten in the second quarter to set up a match-winning 45-point lead by half-time, which Richmond never challenged; Carlton ultimately won by 27 points. In a strong display from its forwards, Alex Jesaulenko kicked seven goals, and Robert Walls and John Nicholls kicked six each.[16]

The 1972 Championship of Australia series was played on the weekend following the VFL Grand Final. The tournament was held at the Adelaide Oval, with two semi-finals played on the Saturday, and the final and third-place playoff on the Sunday. The tournament was contested by the premiers of the four state leagues: Carlton (VFL), North Adelaide (SANFL), East Perth (WANFL), and City-South (from the NTFA, winner of the Tasmanian State Premiership). The prize for the winning team was $10,000.

Carlton easily accounted for East Perth in its semi-final, a rough game from which several East Perth players earned suspensions.[18] The Grand final against North Adelaide was a close contest; Carlton held a two-goal lead after five minutes of the final quarter, but did not score again and was overrun by North Adelaide by one point.[19]

In October and November, Carlton and a team of All-Stars embarked upon a world tour, playing three exhibition matches in different countries. The All-Stars won the series 2–1.

From 22 October until 13 November, the Carlton team went on a three-week world tour. The tour was organised during the season by president George Harris. In addition to a busy social calendar, the tour featured three exhibition matches between Carlton and a team of All-Stars from other senior teams around Australia.

When initially organised, the tour was to have featured matches at: The Oval in London, UK; on a temporary field in Stuttgart, West Germany; and at Lenin Stadium in Moscow, USSR – however, of these, only the London match went ahead. The Moscow match was abruptly cancelled by the Soviet Union, which cited "technical reasons" in its communication to the Australian embassy; Harris arranged for the Russian leg of the tour to instead be played in Athens, Greece. The Stuttgart match was then cancelled when it became apparent that an early winter would render the match unplayable; Harris organised for this leg of the tour to be played in Singapore.[23]

The All-Stars team which accompanied Carlton on the tour was announced in July. Twenty-two players were selected, each from a different club: eleven came from the other eleven VFL clubs, five came from SANFL clubs, five came from WAFL clubs and one came from Tasmania.[24]

The first match was played as originally scheduled at The Oval in London. A purpose-built cricket venue, The Oval was an appropriate size and shape for Australian rules football; the hard centre wicket area was covered over with coir mats for the match. The Prince of Wales (now Charles III) was in attendance at the match, and met with the touring party prior to the game. The match drew a crowd of approximately 9,000 people, almost all of whom were Australian expatriates. Carlton won the match 12.12 (84) to 10.18 (78).[20]

The second match in Athens was the most bizarre of the tour. The game was played on a soccer pitch, which is both rectangular and significantly smaller than a typical Australian rules football field; to accommodate this, the field for the exhibition match was aligned along the diagonal of the rectangle to maximise its length, and the match was played with eleven players per side instead of eighteen. This resulted in a high-scoring match, the All-Stars winning 19.13 (127) to 19.10 (124); Robert Walls kicked ten goals for Carlton and David Clarke kicked nine for the All-Stars. The attendance of 3,000 was described as being similar in size to that drawn by a midweek soccer match in Athens at the time, and the Greek crowd reportedly supported Carlton because its guernsey matched the Greek national colours of blue and white.[21]

The final match in Singapore was played on a temporary oval field, which was set up on three adjacent soccer pitches. The crowd of 8,500 was mostly a mixture of locals and Australian servicemen based in Singapore. The oppressively humid weather was the most significant difficulty with the match, which was won by the All-Stars, 11.11 (77) to 9.11 (65).[22][25] Laws in Singapore at the time prevented men from wearing long hair, so many players on both teams were forced to have haircuts before the tour.[26]

Upon return, Harris announced that the club intended to return to Europe for a second tour in 1973, including another match at The Oval, a rescheduled match in Stuttgart, as well as matches in Wales and Ireland; but, the second tour never went ahead.[27]

Greg Kennedy's omission from the Grand Final team

The most notable absence from the premiership twenty was that of full forward Greg Kennedy. Kennedy was the club's leading goalkicker for the season, and had played 22 matches; but he had kicked only one goal in each of the semi-finals against Richmond.[28] In a tactical change, Nicholls shifted Kennedy to 20th man in the preliminary final against St Kilda, and Alex Jesaulenko, who had been playing in the midfield throughout the season, returned to his former position at full-forward and kicked seven goals;[29] so, when Nicholls adopted the same strategy for the Grand Final, there was no longer a role in the team for Kennedy to fill and he was omitted.[30] Kennedy was replaced as 20th man by Garry Crane;[31] Jesaulenko kicked seven goals from full-forward in the Grand Final.[16]

• Round 21 – Greg Kennedy kicked twelve goals against Hawthorn. It was the most goals in a match by a Carlton player since 1921, when Horrie Clover kicked the club-record thirteen goals.[44]