Modewarre co-coach Chris Carlon steps down moments after the Warriors’ elimination final loss to Anglesea

The Roos ripped the game right open with a 7.7 third quarter against a depleted Warriors outfit, who lost two players to injury after half time including captain Jeremy Ollis who was taken to hospital with a suspected broken thumb.

However, speaking to the Geelong Advertiser outside the changerooms at Portarlington on Sunday, Carlon said he had just made the tough decision to step away from the club due to family reasons.

“Pretty sad, I retired from coaching about half an hour ago,” Carlon said.

“I decided to hang up the whiteboard.

“I didn’t think that was the way it was going to end.”

Carlon, 43, who began coaching 22 years ago, said it was time to step away with a family member battling a private health issue.

“It’s probably time to spend some time with the family,” he said.

“You can be as serious as you want about football, but family’s everything and we’ve had a tough 12 months at home.”

The former St Albans mentor said football had given him something else to focus on but the time was right.

“It’s helped to take focus, I suppose, to give me something else to think about,” he said.

“It’s easy to think about those sorts of things all the time.

“Don’t get me wrong, I love coaching football, and I really didn’t really want this to be the end.

“But we’ve made a decision that’s probably the right one at the moment.”

Meanwhile, Carlon said the Warriors simply didn’t deliver the ball efficiently enough to their forwards on Sunday, with focal point Tom Hornsey kept goalless.

“We made them probably look a little bit better than what they did down back,” he said.

“We just didn’t kick the ball to him in the right way.

“It was certainly nothing that Tom did, it was just the way we disposed of it.”

However, he said losing two players to injury – forward Callan Farrell suffered an ankle complaint in the first term – after half time was also pivotal.

“(Farrell) soldiered on to half time,” he said.

“We tried to stop them for as long as we could.

“But when you run out of soldiers, that’s what happens.

“It was always going to be tough to keep soldiering on, but the guys acquitted themselves well.

“They’re a good outfit, no doubt, healthy and fit we thought we’d push them a bit more.”

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Carlon was proud of what the club had achieved in 2023.

“To win nine out of the last 12 games, they’ve done a great job,” he said.

“In a lot of people’s eyes we’ve overachieved, but for us we think we’ve probably finished where we thought we were going to.”

Originally published as Modewarre co-coach Chris Carlon steps down moments after the Warriors’ elimination final loss to Anglesea