On a Monday morning in late June, Carlton players filed into the club’s Ikon Park headquarters, many with their tails between their legs.

Two days earlier at the MCG they had been thrashed by lowly North Melbourne.

A Carlton pre-season training session in January has sparked plenty of online commentary.Credit: My Blue Heaven/Heath Buck

They only lost by 11 points, but the scoreline flattered the Blues. They were 46 points down at three-quarter-time and their awful season had hit rock bottom. The players worried about how brutal Monday’s review would be. They shouldn’t have been.

Instead of tearing paint off the walls as he may have done as Lions captain in the early 2000s, coach Michael Voss instead decided to use the carrot, not the stick. He replayed positive vision over and over, concentrating on all the things his players had done well, particularly during the last quarter, when the Blues kicked five goals to nothing.

Players this masthead spoke to were shocked. They had deserved to be verbally smashed, but they weren’t.

Voss is not the only coach to avoid berating players to achieve a positive outcome. Speak to any club psychologist, any assistant coach, and they will tell you how hard it can be to connect with the younger generation of players.

Warning: The video below contains coarse language

If you criticise them too hard, you risk losing them........

© The Sydney Morning Herald