The dust has well and truly settled on the 2009 season. What was your broad-strokes assessment of Carlton's year?
I thought it was really positive from a win-loss point of view. I think 13 wins gives you a great opportunity as a team that hasn't played finals for a while. In the last five years or so that would have got you a home final, but it was an interesting year in that respect.

Our season was really positive when you consider that early on we lost Jarrad Waite, Andrew Walker doesn't play much, neither does Michael Jamison, and Robbie Warnock didn't play at all.

We took a lot of steps in our progression as a team to be able to defend a lot better. We saw across the board that our scores against dropped by about 13 points while we maintained and even improved on our offensive play by about three points a game.

We got another year into Matthew Kreuzer and some of the kids that we think are going to be fantastic players for us down the track.

Across the board I thought it was a significant jump for us considering we were still the youngest team in the competition in terms of match experience.

The end to your season would have been a bitter pill to swallow and it could have very nearly been so much different. Do you dwell on the lessons of the Brisbane Lions game or do you rule a line through it and move on?
The taste of playing finals and that atmosphere was a fantastic learning experience for our players.

I think we reflect on the game and it was a bitter pill to swallow, but all in all you see the hunger in the players' eyes after the loss and you talk to them during the season review and I could see that they were really hurt - as they should be.

It will really help us in the pre-season for them to be able to think, 'I've had a taste of it'. The feedback from the players was that it was a fantastic experience to be part of finals football.

A lot of players were saying, 'Well, if that's what a first final was like then imagine what a second or a third, or progressing all the way through would be like'.

They're the things that you talk about and you say, 'Well, we were a kick away from experiencing the next level' so that's our aim next year and beyond.

What's a realistic goal for next season given that you've had two high-profile departures in Brendan Fevola and Nick Stevens?
That's tough to say right now. It will be a week-to-week proposition and a lot will depend on where we sit at the start of the season [personnel-wise]. I think it's probably something that needs to wait until then.

We'd expect to win more games than we lose and that should give you a chance to play finals football. That's obviously what we're after, but I think we need to see where our list is early in the year in terms of the players we have available.

To try and make predictions right now might be a little unfair.

Stevens' retirement had been on the cards since late in the season, but it's still a blow to lose a player of his calibre before his time.
Yeah, it is a real shame to lose him. He's been a great player for our club for six years. He's put his body on the line and to be confronted with [a serious health issue] is a tough choice for any individual to make.

He's a young man, he's just got married and he wants kids so he just had to make sure that he [tried to safeguard] his athleticism after footy. I mean, you lose a fair bit of that as you get older but he needed to make sure that he was able to do just the normal things in life and not have any complications with that.

It's hard, but I guess the thing you reflect on too is that it didn't come earlier in his career and he got to play 231 games. He's been a great player for our club and was vice-captain for a few years and he will be missed, there's no doubt about it.

Very few people have the perfect exit. You can't actually write the script. Tom Harley's probably the exception, but to play 231 games I think is a credit to him.

Do you foresee the team having to perhaps take a small step backwards while you adjust to life without Fevola and Stevens?
 Everyone says, 'Oh, your goalkicker has gone', but every second ball that went inside 50 went to him, so that will give a lot of other players an opportunity now.

Just on that, if you can actually reduce the opposition's score do you need to kick as many goals? So that will be the other task for the team. You don't need as many goalkickers when you're actually defending a little bit better.

We know that we need to get our opposition under 90 points [per game] and last year we didn't quite achieve that so that will be the next step.

How do you view Fev's departure now? Would you have done anything differently?
Things are put in front of you very quickly and, circumstances as they were, I think it was a great time for our club to move on.

Brendan had been here for a long time and things hadn't changed. Things had needed to change and they didn't so we made the change.

But I think for both clubs it's going to turn out to be a win-win. Maybe for Brisbane it will be short-term and for us it will be slightly longer term because of the pick and young Lachie Henderson coming on board.

Is it a bit similar to the Wayne Schwass-Shannon Grant scenario? The Swans got Schwass who gave them four years of really good service and really helped their team and then Grant actually played for the Kangaroos for 11 years.

I sort of see it fairly similarly for our two clubs. It's just one of those things. He had been a great player for our club, but his time was up.

Have you spoken with him since the trade played out?
No, I haven't spoken to Brendan.

Disappointing?
Yeah, it is a little bit, but that's the way it goes. Do you call him and have a chat about it or do you expect that, at 29, he might get on the front foot and talk about it [with me]? But that wasn't the case and every individual is different.

Maybe he just needed some space and to reflect on it later in life.

How many times do you reckon you'll get asked about him next year?
(Laughs) Yeah, that'll probably depend a lot on how big a score we kick as a team.

What are your early thoughts on how your forward line will look without him?
I think you can see Henderson and Setanta O'hAilpin playing a big part in there. How we structure up in different games and scenarios will vary. I think our flexibility and unpredictability will make it maybe a little bit tougher for opposition teams to get a handle on us.

Do you see more midfielders playing forward? Do you see plenty of our talls playing down there? We'll throw up some different scenarios for opposition teams to think about.

Most important I think is how you bring the ball inside your forward 50 and the way you distribute it. Whether that's a favoured kick to the leading forward or it goes the other way and favours the defender, they're both inside 50s. So maybe we need to reduce the number of inside 50s and go inside a bit smarter.

There will be a lot of opportunities for some of these forwards who haven't had the ball kicked to them a lot in the past. It will be really exciting to see which one grabs their opportunity first.

Where does Waite fit in next year?
We'll just have to wait and see how Jarrad takes to his rehabilitation and how well he's travelling from that point of view.

The beauty of Jarrad is we know that he can play anywhere. He's a real x-factor for our team and I think he'll probably be used at both ends of the ground.

How is he going with his rehab?
Fantastically. His progression has been outstanding. He's been working extremely hard and he should be right for round one.

He should be able to get a few [practice] games in and get his confidence up with some contact which will be great.

Kreuzer continued to come along in leaps and bounds last year. He's a young ruckman who has shown he can play well up forward, too. Do you foresee him spending more time up there?
Yeah, I think he will. We'll play Shaun Hampson forward at times as well because he's shown he can be exciting, too. But with two young ruckmen it's sometimes hard to play the kids up there for too long because you know that they then have to go and play in the ruck position and you have to be mindful of their game time.

But Kreuz will play forward a bit. He looks like he's put on a bit more size and he's starting to look like a big man now instead of a big boy.

What does your ideal ruck combination look like?
Oh, we'll wait and see. We've got four ruckmen on our list and it will be a great opportunity for them.

I think we've got great flexibility because they're all a bit different. Warnock's so tall, Kreuzer is more of a follower-type ruckman, (Sam) Jacobs is an old-fashioned type and Hampson's athleticism is just so exciting.

He's the quickest at our club over 20 metres and he's got the highest vertical leap, so he just brings pure athleticism to our mix.

Sammy Jacobs was a rookie last year, but played the first four games and a showed a bit before he got injured.

Blues fans will be dying to get a look at Warnock and I suppose you are, too. I noticed he was out there with the boys for the first session. How is he looking early on?
He had a little shoulder op post-season to clean a few things up, but I think all things being equal there won't be any issues with him, touch wood. He should be fine.

You've brought in Leading Teams to have a look over the club. Tell us a bit about what you're hoping to achieve there.
Ray (McLean) and the boys from Leading Teams have got a fantastic reputation from working with Adelaide, Sydney and Geelong and even the Melbourne Storm there for a bit, too.

We thought we'd bring them in from a club point of view - not just the footy department - so Ray will have a look at how the whole club operates.

Greg Swann said a while ago that he had a few thoughts going forward on the football side of things, as well as the football club as a whole. Especially going into the new facility, we wanted to [have a review] done before Christmas so that everyone was on the same page when we got in there.

You mention the new facility and with two veterans in Fevola and Stevens moving on, do you almost get the sense that this is the start of a new era?
Yeah, I think it is, especially with the new facility. When I look over there I can still almost see the Heatley Stand in my own eyes, but instead there's a brand new facility that's almost finished.

We haven't played games here for a while, but I can still stand out in the middle of the ground and almost hear the floorboards of the old stand getting pounded by supporters with the whole thing almost shaking.

Those were great times, but you've got to keep pace. It's part of football. I think it's fantastic that we'll have a new facility.

I think that's an enormous step for our footy club to now be able to challenge these other clubs who have had these sorts of resources around their players for such a long time.

Now we can become super-competitive from a fitness point of view.

With the national draft looming is there a specific need you'd like to address at least with your first-rounder?
It will be interesting. Pick 12 is a little bit different to where we've been in the past. Even last year with pick six we roughly knew the two or three players we'd have to choose from, but getting out to 12 you've probably got about six players you think might last until somewhere around there.

We'll take the best player though. That's been our philosophy all along. We'll take the best player still in the draft at that pick and maybe as we get down to the back end of the draft we might look a bit more strategically in terms of size, shape and position.

What about your playing list ahead of the draft? Are you done making changes or are we likely to see another name or two drop off?
We'll probably just have to wait from that point of view.

OK, what about Matt Maguire? What's the thinking behind bringing him in?
It will give us a chance to just to see where his body is at and to have a look at him with our group.

He's a tall who can play forward and back. He came out of a team that played in the grand final and was a kick away from actually winning it. He couldn't force his way in there, but he had a fairly good season [in the VFL] so we'll take the opportunity to have a look at him.

I suppose like all players that you get down to train with you, they get to put their best case forward and if he does everything right he'll be a chance.

Last question: what's the biggest challenge facing you entering your third full year in the top job?
The biggest challenge is always maintaining momentum - in any business or team sport, it's a game of momentum.

Look at our final against Brisbane: we thought we actually dominated the first quarter and we have four slip-ups and they kicked four goals to our five in that term. Then in the last quarter we couldn't stop their momentum.

I think AFL seasons are actually about momentum. We had a block there last year where we won a few games in a row and, even going from one season to the next, it's about reconnecting with positive momentum to just get the ball rolling.

That will be our biggest challenge as a team and as a club.