CARLTON remains confident star ruck Tom De Koning will ignore multi-million dollar free agency offers elsewhere and will commit his long-term future to the club.

De Koning enters the 2025 season as one of the competition's most sought-after free agents, having exploded into contention among the League's best young rucks following a stellar last season.

Having turned down interest from Geelong, St Kilda and Sydney two years ago to commit through to free agency with the Blues, De Koning is now set to attract offers well in excess of $1 million per season to leave at year's end.

Carlton is unlikely to be able to match the financial sums being offered elsewhere for De Koning, though Blues coach Michael Voss declared himself confident in the club's culture and direction being enough to sway the 25-year-old to stay.

"I am (confident)," Voss told AFL.com.au at Ikon Park this week.

"What our job is to do is to provide the best environment we possibly can for any player. You back it in. What I've seen, particularly over the last 12 months, is that Tom has really come on as a player.

"Before that – and I've had these conversations with him – he was pretty inconsistent. He was good sometimes and not good at others. He's been able to build that durability that you need, that resilience to be able to play ruck. It's not as simple as being able to roll out there week after week and be involved in 90 contests. He's been able to develop that over a period of time.

"But when you can look at a player and they look happy and they like where they are, I reckon it tells you a lot. He looks like that. He looks like a player playing with great energy, he looks like he's playing really free.

"When the time comes where we need to have that conversation, we'll have it. But I've been really impressed with his pre-season. He's doubled down on a lot of areas he needed to work on in his game and he's raring to go."

Carlton is wary of rival interest in De Koning, as well as lucrative figures potentially being a distraction, though Voss has not yet felt any need to chat with his talented young ruck about where his focus should lie heading into the 2025 campaign.

"I haven't felt an urgency to do it," Voss said.

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"I'm trying to have these conversations with players all the time around where they're at. One of the really important factors you can't ignore is contract status. Whether that's a player that's just hanging on by his fingernails and needs to know what that status looks like, or whether that's a player who is more prominent and might have interest from other people, you try to give them surety where they need it and try to give them clarity where they need it.

"You try and get an understanding of where they're at in their football and what they want out of football. Then, what you do is in your environment you try and back it in as best as you possibly can. Through that, you convince them that this is the best place for them to be. Hopefully, we can do that."

Carlton was relatively quiet in the trade and free agency space last season, only acquiring experienced defender Nick Haynes while parting with Matt Kennedy to the Western Bulldogs and Matt Owies to West Coast.

Kennedy and Owies were two of only six Blues to feature in 23 or more games last year, while Nic Newman, another to do so, will miss the entire season with a knee injury.

But the club moved up the draft order to snag gun midfielder Jagga Smith at pick No.3, with Voss confident in his side's youngsters and its strength in depth being able to make the step up this season.

"It's always a fine balance between the more experienced players and then what we feel like is coming underneath. That's been the evolution of our list," Voss said.

"When I first walked in, I felt like we were over-indexed in inside midfielders. They were everywhere. That's been a real plus on our list, but at the same time we had to work out what we wanted our list to look like and where the game was going.

"We've had to spend a fair bit of time on what is the capacity of our group and what does it actually need to look like? We've spent a bit of time on that. What we've also spent time on is then what's coming through next.

"Making tough decisions like that on the guys that you just spoke about, it was believing that we have another group that's about to come through and that we're willing to give exposure to. Is that depth? I'm not sure. But it certainly says that we feel like some of them are ready to go.

"They've probably had their grounding, now they're ready for AFL football. Hopefully, they provide the depth that we need."

AFL.com.au's full interview with Carlton coach Michael Voss will soon be uploaded to the Your Coach podcast feed. Subscribe now to hear from your club's coach ahead of the 2025 AFL season