Jacob Weitering says that the best way for the Blues to move forward from a disappointing 2025 is “absolute alignment”.
By Cristian Filippo, Carlton Media
IT WAS the comment on SEN from Jacob Weitering which pricked the ears of his skipper, Patrick Cripps.
Speaking in the final week of the season, Weitering said that the best way – the only way – for the Blues to move forward from a disappointing and frustrating 2025 was “absolute alignment”.
He doubled down on those comments when two of the Blues’ senior leaders sat down to chat about the year that was for Carlton Media.
“As a playing group, we’ve got to be all in,” Weitering said.
“You can only speak for the playing group. As a player and as a leader, you want to feel connected, you want to feel safe and you want to feel trusted. Trust is bloody hard to build, and it’s very easy to lose.
“We’ve got to be pulling in the right direction. We’ve got to have alignment – absolute alignment – on where we want to go and what our purpose is.”
After two years of finals football, the Blues will once again be watching on when the competition’s best teams compete in September for the ultimate prize.
For captain Cripps, that hurts. And he wants his playing group and Club as a whole to “embrace that [expectation] – and not be suffocated by it”.
“That’s the raw and honest things. That’s Club-wide,” Cripps said.
“We’ve got to learn to deal with and enjoy the noise, because if you harness it the right way, even moments like the last quarter against Gold Coast, it’s addicting. If you harness it the wrong way, you get a lot of players low on confidence and overthink.
“The more we talk about expectation, normalise it and realise we’re a footy club… we come in with the right energy, build the right habits, have the right standards – that’s when we’re going to be at our best. I feel like that’s really clear moving forward.
“That’s the challenge, but that’s also the excitement I see. If we get that right, there’s a powerful beast behind us.”