Mitch McGovern will remain a Blue after Carlton handed the versatile defender a one-year contract extension after their failed move to pry Buku Khamis out of the Western Bulldogs.<\/p>\n
McGovern, the 31-year-old brother of West Coast premiership star Jeremy who was forced into medical retirement earlier this year, fell one game short of a reported automatic extension clause at the end of the 2025 season after not playing in the final six games of the year.<\/p>\n
He was firmly on the outer with the club after Khamis requested a trade to the Blues, with McGovern forced to wait out the trade period without a deal.<\/p>\n
However, with Carlton failing to secure the wantaway defender while also losing Jack Silvagni the club was left with few alternatives but to re-sign McGovern.<\/p>\n
McGovern has played 145 AFL games including 97 for Carlton since crossing from Adelaide and was deployed up forward at times this season kicking 11 goals, his most in a year as a Blue.<\/p>\n
However McGovern has struggled with both form and injury, having only played more than 20 games once in his seven years at the Blues.<\/p>\n
Despite the club hoping to go in a different direction, Carlton list boss Nick Austin said he was pleased McGovern would stay.<\/p>\n
\u201cMitch\u2019s versatility at both ends of the ground, combined with the experience he brings will see him add some flexibility to our side next season,\u201d Austin said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe fits seamlessly into our structure and helps strengthen our team across the field in a number of positions.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe look forward to seeing him back at IKON Park and getting stuck into pre-season training.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mitch McGovern will remain a Blue after Carlton handed the versatile defender a one-year contract extension after their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234571,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,135983,64,63,55,639,3239,135984,44,588,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-234570","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-afl","8":"tag-afl","9":"tag-albany-advertiser","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-australian-football-league","13":"tag-australianfootballleague","14":"tag-carlton-blues","15":"tag-great-southern-sport","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-sport","18":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}