INCOMING General Manager of Football Chris Davies spoke to media as the 2025 Continental Tyres AFL Trade Period officially launched at Marvel Stadium today.
On Charlie Curnow:
"The Club has made it really clear from our perspective that Charlie has got four years on a deal and we expect him to be at Carlton for those four years. I don’t think it’s going to be helpful for me to go into hypotheticals about that right now, but it’s fair to say from our perspective that Charlie has got a contract for the next period of time and there’s nothing that has come to us that will make us reconsider that.
"You’ve got to answer that call and work out what the person is saying on the other end, it’s Nick’s job to field those calls - but we’ve been really clear and I can’t be any more clear that Charlie is a highly valued member of our group and we want him to be here for the next period of time.
"We’ve all got to acknowledge - and I want to be real clear on this - that we value Charlie really highly and he’s a player who has been significant in the AFL competition. As much as you want to talk about Zak [Butters] and other people, Charlie Curnow for us is a player who our people love and our players love. We want him to be successful at Carlton into the future."
On Michael Voss' comments in his John Nicholls Medal address:
"Michael’s comments last night from my standpoint, I’m looking at what the opportunity is for 2026 and beyond. In any situation, the first thing you can do is identify the issues you’ve got and going to work on fixing them.
"I don’t have any relationship with Carlton from 2025, but what I do have is the opportunity to help the Club into the future and that will certainly be my focus. What’s been clear is people are giving their view of what they have seen Carlton as in 2025, I’m going to have to work out what ways I can be helpful."
On Elijah Hollands' future:
Importantly, we’ve given Elijah the opportunity to explore what the future might look like for him. Whether that is at another club or not will remain to be seen, but importantly, we’re going into 2026 with eyes wide open to explore whatever options he may have.
On the first round picks received as free agency compensation:
It gives Nick and Mick real flexibility, which is important for us. I wouldn’t want to define where that’s going to end, but the great thing entering a trade period is to have as much flexibility as you possibly can. We’ve got players who want to come to us which will help us from a depth perspective, we believe they’ll help our team performance.
On deals for Campbell Chesser, Buku Khamis and Liam Reidy:
"It’s a great thing that those guys do want to come. We think they are deals that can get done, some of that will rely on the other club wanting to do the deal. We believe we can end with those three players coming in over this trade period."
On the potential father-son acquisition of Harry Dean:
"I’ve watched a bit of Harry Dean lately, and he’s certainly a very good player who we think will help us into the future. Where that bid ends up, we’ll find out on draft night, but it’s nice to be able to look at a player like that and think he can end up at Carlton."
On the Club working towards changes for father-son and Academy bidding:
"That’s a work in progress still from an AFL standpoint. You know that my perspective on that is the AFL need to give clubs a bit more notice on about what is going on rather than just saying what is going to change without actually giving us a sense of what that is. We’ll work with whatever rules are put in place and our club will be good enough to put itself in a position to get Cody in."
On negotiations around Sam Walsh's future:
"The Club is pretty comfortable about where that has gotten to. He’ll enjoy the remainder of his break and once he comes back and gets into pre-season, we’ll have that chat from there. From our club’s perspective, we believe Sam will be a massive player for us into the future."
