Carlton and coach Michael Voss have finally parted ways.

The former Brisbane superstar has made the decision to step down after a nightmare season which has been dogged by controversies and, once again, wild second-half fade-outs.

It has been a rapid fall from grace for the 50-year-old who took the job ahead of the 2022 season and then powered the team into a preliminary final in 2023.

The 2024 season was also looking promising and the Blues were second on the ladder as late as Round 19. But they only managed one win out of their last six games, slumping to eighth on the ladder before eliminated from the finals by eventual premiers Brisbane.

It has been an utter disaster since.

The jungle drums were beating early in 2025, not long after Carlton blew a 41-point lead against a rebuilding Richmond team in Round 1, and lost the game by 13 points.

Soon, the calls to ‘sack Voss’ became deafening, but ultimately he survived, with Carlton issuing a statement in August last year, saying the board had “unanimously endorsed” Voss to coach Carlton into the 2026 season.

But the losses and second half fade-outs have continued in 2026, including a jarring 66-point turnaround against Melbourne in Round 3, where they held a 43-point lead and lost by 23 points, and a four-goal collapse to North Melbourne the following week.

Carlton’s management of Elijah Hollands during the clash with Collingwood — another game where they led for three-quarters but fell agonisingly short — only intensified the scrutiny on Voss and his assistants.

With that investigation in the rear-view mirror the Blues showed some added fight in tighter losses to Collingwood and finals favourites Fremantle and Brisbane but Voss has now decided his time is up.

Voss gave no indications of an imminent decision after a comeback against the Lions fell short last Friday.

“People will make (the result) about your job, but the reality is, I’ll make it about something else,” he said, explaining his goal was to create a winning environment.

“We’ve got to continue to build that real positive energy around the place, because there is a spirit within this group that keeps coming and but we’ve also got to learn how to win and how to execute more often.”

Josh Fraser will step into the interim role in the first year of his second stint at the club.

The 44-year-old, a former Northern Blues/Bullants VFL senior coach, will begin his tenure with a home game against the Western Bulldogs on Saturday night.

Voss’s exit comes 13 years on from being sacked by his beloved club Brisbane.

It was his first stint as a senior coach, and the premiership captain had also walked a bumpy road.

In his first year in the hot seat in 2009, he breathed life back into the Lions.

They finished sixth on the ladder to feature in their first finals campaign since 2004. They also won a final, ironically, overcoming a 30-point deficit in the last quarter to defeat Carlton.

Like his time at the Blues, however, despair followed the early high, and the following years the Lions missed the finals and languished around the bottom half of the ladder until it was decided enough was enough.

Voss is one of the greatest AFL players of all time.

He is a five-time All-Australian, a Brownlow medallist, and a triple premiership captain of arguably the greatest team of the 21st century.

In 2011 he was inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame.