Carlton coach Coach Michael Voss is adamant the decision to sign ruckman Marc Pittonet for the next four years doesn’t mean in-demand young tall Tom De Koning is out the door.
De Koning hasn’t played at AFL level since Round 5, but Voss said the big man would “come under strong consideration” to face the Swans at the SCG on Friday night.
The 23-year-old is out of contract at the end of 2023 and has put off talks, with other clubs including Geelong and St Kilda believed to be chasing him for next season.
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On Wednesday, the Blues confirmed Pittonet, 26, had re-signed until the end of 2027.
But Voss said the club wanted both players in navy blue for the future and said any suggestions otherwise were “just assumptions”.
“As far as we‘re concerned, I think what naturally people do is they look at one and that equals the other. It doesn’t, it doesn’t impact it at all,” Voss said.
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“What we‘re obviously really pleased with is that we were able to get obviously Pitto done and the position’s been pretty clear for us from the very start around where Tom wanted to wait until the end of the year.
“So we‘re happy to support that and we’re going to get the best out of him as best as we possibly can and hopefully that means that he’s staying with the Carlton Football Club because we want him to stay. He’s an important person to us.
“But the ongoing chat around ‘is he here or isn’t he’ – I think there’s a lot of assumptions that get made about our list management strategy and they are assumptions and that’s it.”
Voss is under pressure himself after losing five of the past six games, with club president Luke Sayers declaring, via a letter to members, that the performances “simply hasn’t been good enough to this point”.
But he also publicly backed the coach, who is contracted until the end of next season, and Voss said he felt that support ahead of Friday’s trip to Sydney.
“It‘s support for our program,” he said.
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“From our perspective, we feel like we’ve got a really good program here. We’re providing a really strong environment.
“We’re going through a bit of a tough patch at the moment that we hope we’re going to work through, and through sticking together and staying pretty strong together by having a really challenging environment and given that clarity that we need, we feel like we can work through it.
“Our goals don‘t change, but at the same time, we’ve very much got our sights on this weekend’s game.”
