{"id":859153,"date":"2026-08-18T02:56:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T02:56:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/859153\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T02:56:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T02:56:16","slug":"afl-news-2026-carlton-blues-appoint-josh-fraser-as-full-time-senior-coach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/859153\/","title":{"rendered":"AFL News 2026: Carlton Blues appoint Josh Fraser as full-time senior coach"},"content":{"rendered":"

Carlton<\/a> has announced current caretaker coach Josh Fraser as full-time senior coach for 2027 and beyond, revealing in a statement the boxes he ticked that ensured he got the job.<\/p>\n

The Blues\u2019 board met on Monday following their qualification for the Wildcard Round<\/a> to tick off the final elements of the decision, before making the news public on Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Josh Fraser is the new Carlton coach. \u00a0Getty Images<\/p>\n

He has signed a contract tying him to the club for three years. <\/p>\n

Under Fraser, the Blues have won 10 of 13 games<\/a>, plus a draw with the Western Bulldogs on Sunday that locked them into the top 10.<\/p>\n

Before that, they were 1-8 and sitting 16th on the ladder. Coach Michael Voss quit following a loss to Brisbane<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Carlton put together a panel to appoint their next coach, which included West Coast premiership coach Adam Simpson.<\/p>\n

Fremantle\u2019s Jaymie Graham, Geelong\u2019s James Kelly, St Kilda\u2019s Corey Enright and Hawthorn\u2019s Daniel Giansiracusa were reportedly the other four shortlisted candidates for the job.<\/p>\n

However, even taking Fraser\u2019s overwhelming performance as interim coach<\/a> out of the equation, club CEO Graham Wright said he was still the top candidate for the job regardless.<\/p>\n

\u201cAcross all the key criteria that we felt we needed for Carlton, he was clearly the standout for us,\u201d Wright said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis football IQ, tactical development and a real Carlton fit, he was the coach we needed and wanted to appoint.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if you take the last 13 weeks out of the equation, Josh was still ahead on the process so we were really comfortable with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The former star ruckman joined Carlton at the start of 2026, after working as Collingwood\u2019s head of development. He served as the Blues\u2019 VFL coach before that.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have always had ambitions to be a senior coach and what the last three months have done is give me the absolute belief that I am ready, and most importantly ready for this exact opportunity, to be senior coach of Carlton,\u201d Fraser said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was told that I had been appointed as senior coach, that sense of appreciation and responsibility I felt in that moment will never be lost on me.<\/p>\n

\u201cI firmly believe I am a product of amazing people around me. The collective commitment to each other and to get better every day in order to improve our football club is a privilege to be part of, and rest assured we want to continue to raise the standards in that regard.\u201d<\/p>\n

This marks the third time Carlton has hired a caretaker after sacking a coach. Brett Ratten got the job in 2007 after Denis Pagan was fired and David Teague similarly after Brendon Bolton was removed in 2019.<\/p>\n

Carlton takes on Fremantle on Saturday afternoon, but are already locked into finishing 9th or 10th.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carlton has announced current caretaker coach Josh Fraser as full-time senior coach for 2027 and beyond, revealing in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":859154,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-859153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859153","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=859153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/859154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=859153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=859153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=859153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}