Former Port Adelaide coach turned broadcaster Ken Hinkley has revealed how the last season of his tenure and the coaching succession plan with Josh Carr played out.
While featuring on SEN's Crunch Time on Saturday, Hinkley called for the Blues to look after Voss' - who was once an assistant coach at the Power under Hinkley - health after a difficult first half of the season.
"My issue with this is: If you know what's going on and that this is over, why are you waiting?" Hinkley said on Crunch Time. "Why would you put Michael through this? Is it just to protect the club and for him to keep taking the whacks? I'm not sure that's fair either.
"It seems everyone is saying, 'It is done, and it's over, and Carlton certainly hasn't denied that. They have to make a decision based on Michael's health as much as the footy club at the moment, like give the guy a break."
Hinkley was asked whether he saw similarities in his last year at the helm in 2025 with what Carlton coach Michael Voss is experiencing in his suspected final season in charge.
"I have lived that," he said.
"This is the difference, I think: We had a succession plan which I agreed to in February (2025), and I was okay with that, and I knew the challenges of the year ahead.
"For me to want to step away, that was never the case. My job, my responsibility, and my effort to Port Adelaide, because they have been very good to me, was to fill that year out and do my best to coach in the moment.
"It got rough, but I coached in the moment. And Josh, this is the difference, and people who sit outside don't understand it. The succession plan allowed Josh to prepare really clearly for the upcoming season.
"We had players who needed to have things repaired and done and have surgery and it took them all out of the way, so I was there in some ways protecting what might be going to happen and that was a lot of losses at the back end of the year, which didn't really sit great for me as far as I'm a winner, I wanna win and I didn't get that opportunity.
"I did my job for the club and for the club to be in a better position at the end of the year than could have been the case.
"If we had got to Round 10 and been where 'Vossy' is at and been 1-8, you have to sack me, you have to get rid of me because I had been there 12 years. Whereas the agreement at the start of the year was that this was going to stop any of that noise in some way, and I had to carry that. I'm okay with that, I can cope with that.
"I didn't think it was an absolute disaster, and I was happy to play my role in that for the Port Adelaide Football Club, who looked after me."
While the Power had a clear plan for what Carr and Hinkley's roles would be, Voss' role is unclear, given how it seems highly unlikely he will keep his post beyond 2026.
Does Voss play a part in future strategy or list decisions? That's an element Hinkley thinks would be tough for his former protegé.
"Josh knew what he was doing, I knew what I was doing," he said.
"I was sort of on three-quarters time in some ways. I didn't have to do all the job that necessarily had to be done.
"That's the difference between my outcomes and Michael's outcomes: there was an agreement in place that we knew who was taking care of the business.
"Michael is now getting asked the questions I would have been getting asked about, 'Who do you think? We are interested in this player, or player X, or player Y. We are in this conversation, do you want to bring him in?' Because Michael is not designing the game plan for next year, he is not designing the style of football we are going to play."
