AFL News 2026: Sam Docherty book ‘What It Takes’ on Carlton Blues retirement, frustration on the way out

Former Carlton captain Sam Docherty has opened up on his tumultuous exit from the club in a tell-all book, after a decorated career that overcame highly publicised adversity.

The star defender retired in 2025, having played 184 games and battled through multiple bouts with testicular cancer and three torn ACLs.

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Docherty feels the club lacked compassion in the way they ushered him out the door, just 12 months on from pushing rehab for his third torn ACL to the absolute limit to try and get back during the 2024 season.

Speaking candidly in his book “What it Takes”, written by Docherty with Konrad Marshall, he provided insight into the mental toll of 2025 and his growing frustrations with the club.

“I could sense the club’s desire to blood the young Blues but I felt I had more to give. My mind kept going back to the principles we tried to establish - Earn the right,” Docherty writes.

“I didn’t feel like I was getting the chance to do that anymore. I began to lose trust. I didn’t handle it all that well, either. I felt disrespected at times, which messed with my mood, so I was cranky. Upset and confused.”

The club sat Docherty down mid-season and informed him he would not be offered a contract for 2026, but he had already made his mind up to retire.

He feels Carlton’s treatment of him in those final few months lacked respect for someone who gave the club everything he had.

“I’d been at the club for a long period of time and put my heart and soul into the club and you always get asked about being selfless and putting the club first,” Docherty told Nine.com.au.

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“Then, ultimately, when the shoe’s on the other foot on the way out, there was, in my opinion, a lack of honesty, a lack of compassion about my situation, a lack of conversation around anything, in terms of retirement or anything until it comes in one blunt conversation at the end when I’d already decided.

“They already knew that I was in a bad place mentally. I think more honesty would have been good from the outset, but ultimately just a bit of understanding about the situation I was in rather than kind of the blunt assessment.

“To not feel like I got the respect on the way out was hard but, ultimately, football clubs are people industries. They’re about looking after your own people and I didn’t feel like I really got that at the end.”

After a decade of pushing for a flag at Carlton, that era was coming to an end by the conclusion of the 2025 season. The Blues were looking to the future and bringing in young players, just two years after being five goals up in a preliminary final.

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Carlton made the call to back coach Michael Voss in for the 2026 season, but then lost Charlie Curnow, Tom de Koning and Jack Silvagni, gutting the top-end of the list.

A year earlier, the club opted not to trade for dual All-Australian defender Dan Houston, who wanted to come to the club, instead going down the draft path and landing 2026 Rising Star award favourite Jagga Smith.

The core of a group that had been with the Blues since the doldrums of the deep rebuild that commenced after the sacking of Mick Malthouse, they had finally tasted September action, but now the priorities were shifting again, and away from them.

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“I wish the list management team had doubled down on the group we had. We’d worked so hard for so long to get up, and after the first dip we dumped the plan and dismantled the group,” Docherty wrote.

Elaborating on that thought, Docherty said he understood that the club is forced to take a wider lens, but lamented not getting another opportunity to pursue a premiership after many years down the bottom and his own personal battles.

“That was the frustration for me. You always take these situations with everyone’s got their own story within them and what people are trying to do. (List manager) Nick Austin is trying to shore up the list for the future, Vossy’s coaching for the now, I’m playing for the now, I’m ready to go,” Docherty said.

“Everyone always thinks that when I say these things, I was thinking about Dan Houston. We had other issues on our list that were lot more important than a half back and we had two first-round picks that, my belief is, we could have done something pretty significant with.

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“We spent the best part of 10 to 12 years getting to the moment where the group that we had with the talent and the forwards and the keys ready to go. I just felt like we kind of just shifted away from that after a bad year where we got smacked by injuries.

“I’m the old guy that’s sitting there wondering what happened in many aspects, and watching it fall apart around me, definitely a level of frustration and I wish I handled my last year a bit better than what I did, but there’s so much emotion into it and a lot of sacrifice.

“I’m a Carlton fan now. I can’t wait to take my kids to the game and watch Cody Walker and Jagga and Harry Dean, and this next group coming together is exceptionally exciting, but I just felt like we had a moment to be able to really double down and have a crack at it, and we chose not to for whatever reason.”

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Following that pivot in strategy, Curnow ultimately requested a trade to Sydney despite being contracted until 2029, while Silvagni, carrying one of the most famous names in the club’s storied history, left for St Kilda as a free agent.

“I’m not going to speak for Charlie or Jack about the reasons why they left, but I’ve always kind of had that age-old adage around good footy clubs don’t lose good people, and we for so many years never had anyone leave,” Docherty said.

“We always had guys sign for unders. We had people taking pay cuts. That was all throughout the time because we all believed in what we were doing, and my aspect on it was around having that direction shifted and realising that maybe we weren’t all part of that next wave is part of the decision-making for everyone.

“We all had the dream of winning a flag, and Charlie, Jack, Harry (McKay), (Jacob) Weitering, we’ve all been on that journey since 2015 in terms of dragging the club back to trying to get success and win and, to kind of have it all end in the way it ended, it’s frustrating. I’m a big believer in just taking accountability for your part in it, as I said before, it’s not like I particularly handled myself as well as I would have.”

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