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Sport Nation
Trade talk: What do the Blues look like in 2026?
Jaiden Sciberras • August 17th, 2025 2:54 pm
Carlton CEO Graham Wright officially took full control over the club on Thursday, and rumours surrounding the Blues’ potential off-season shifts are in full force.
The outline from the club is clear – return to contention. Carlton won’t be selling to rebuild, and although the club has put significant time into their youth over the course of 2025, the goal is not to look too far into the future, but to leap back into September as soon as next season.
So where does Graham Wright start?
The simple answer is to identify exactly what assets he will have available to him come next year, and with a number of players potentially on the verge of exiting the club, SEN’s chief reporter Sam Edmund has outlined that Carlton is aware and preparing for life without two of their wantaway stars.
“He started officially as CEO on Friday, but this after 10 months of looking behind every curtain, around every corner and down every hole at IKON Park,” Edmund told SEN Crunch Time.
“He recommended at the end of that, as we know, Michael Voss stays coach, list management team remain, but seemingly everything else is up for debate and set to change.
“Tom De Koning is gone. He will leave for St Kilda and the Blues know that. Jack Silvagni is set to leave for Collingwood or the Bulldogs, and the Blues are resigned to that too. Injured and out for the year, Jack was not with teammates on Thursday night for Carlton’s AFLW season opener.”
Beyond the obvious exits, Wright has already stated that each player within the Blues’ core unit remain a part of future planning, and despite potential rumours of interest elsewhere, Carlton’s star cohort will remain for the foreseeable future.
“Graham Wright went on to say in his press conference this week that he hoped the star core of Charlie Curnow, Harry McKay, Sam Walsh, Jacob Weitering and even the captain in Patrick Cripps would be there next year,” Edmund continued.
“But out of that group, can we just spend a little bit of time on Curnow. One game left in this season, he is not playing. A miserable campaign for him and his club – he has had more than a few of those now in his decade at that footy club around the two Colemans and the run to that prelim final.
“At 28, Charlie Curnow is a name that just will not go away in the trade space.”
It was reported earlier this season that Curnow had significant interest in a shift up north, as life within the eye of the Victorian media driving the star forward away from the Blues.
Following that report, Curnow vocally denied his desire to leave the club, however the reports were enough to see the discontent Blue remain in trade talks over the remaining weeks of the season.
That being said, as Edmund reports, there may not be a club with the assets nor the willpower to go ahead with the astronomical fee that the Blues would consider in a trade for the superstar - that is, if the club would consider a move at all.
“At the end of this year, he has, I think, a decision to make. Not so much with what he wants to do, but how he wants to go about it, if at all,” Edmund said.
“The Blues are almost certainly not going to trade him, and even if they do contemplate it, they will understandably want the absolute world for him.
“And Curnow won’t just go anywhere. Geelong and Gold Coast are the two spots I personally could see him, and when you’re a big management stable like his at Conor Sports, you’ve got competing interests.
“I wouldn’t have thought they are going to try and move Curnow to the Suns for another one of their clients in Ben King, who probably does want to return to Victoria at some stage, but not now.
“He has gone through the hard yards up there, he is on the doorstep of success potentially, you wouldn’t explore a move with him.
“And Geelong, who would the Cats give up? Sam De Koning? Sam isn’t going to go to Carlton with brother Tom leaving Carlton, so I think the Cats are potentially a big play here – potentially the biggest. But I’m not sure they’re prepared to meet the asking price for this sort of player.
“Jeremy Cameron was 27 when Geelong sold the farm for him. They are at a very similar age. I don’t think the Cats view Charlie as that sort of player – the ‘sell the farm’ sort of player.
“If it’s Sydney, Carlton will say Errol Gulden, so you get the picture. It’s monopoly board game stuff, it can’t happen.
“Curnow, I think, holds some desire still to leave Carlton, but is he stuck? Can a deal get done? You sign a six-year extension through until 2029, and this is the bed you make for yourself.
“The last thing he or his camp would want, I would reckon, is for this to play out like the Christian Petracca saga last year. Petracca wanted out, Melbourne could’ve, they probably should’ve traded him. They didn’t, and they might argue they couldn’t have. Just too hard – too many years, too much money. Clayton Oliver the same.
“This will be thrashed out behind the scenes come season’s end, but it just looks too hard.”
Carlton played out a top performance against Port Adelaide in Round 23, returning to winning ways with a 54-point smashing at Marvel Stadium.
Behind Harry McKay’s resurgence, the evident improvement of their young core, an exceptional return from Sam Walsh and the prospects of returning senior players, Carlton appear certain to attack season 2026 with success at the forefront.
