Two significant board meetings scheduled for Monday will go some way to shaping football's future and that of one of the sport's most famous clubs.
The AFL Commission will meet with leadership firmly on the agenda. Having contacted and conducted preliminary interviews with a series of candidates for the soon-to-be-vacated chief executive's role, a decision on Andrew Demetriou's replacement should come next month.
At least two club chiefs - Gary Pert and Stuart Fox - knocked back the opportunity to present, both choosing to focus on their current jobs at Collingwood and Hawthorn respectively. A further three - Brendon Gale, Brian Cook and Dave Matthews - have held opening talks with the commission's executive search team.
Gillon McLachlan, the outright favourite, is expected to present over the coming weeks and, should the commission reject his promotion, that move would create shockwaves through the Australian sporting landscape. There is some likelihood, though, that the job description could change slightly and it is not certain whether Demetriou's replacement will hold a place on the AFL board as he did.
The Carlton Football Club might be famous but it is no longer the powerful entity it once was in the old VFL. Having failed to keep pace with its traditional rivals in terms of membership and crowd numbers, it has only itself to blame.
A symbolic move to the MCG next season - which, in fact, will probably mean only an additional two home games there - is one positive move, but there remains no doubt the club remains strangled by its lumbering, overly large and deeply divided board.
That Mark LoGiudice will win the Carlton presidency at Monday night's board meeting appears a bigger certainty than McLachlan, but for the Blues the battle will only then have started. By our reckoning, the 12-member board is divided into three factions.
On the upside, LoGiudice is a largely self-made man on a board top heavy with inherited wealth and a handful of billionaires and substantial multimillionaires. Smart, diligent and well-connected, he has the support of influential families such as the Pratts, the Mathiesons and the Silvagnis.
One downside remains the Mathiesons. That LoGiudice felt the need to enlist Bruce Mathieson's support indicates he remains hamstrung from the start in leading a club that would do well to walk away from Mathieson's gaming venues altogether.
Mathieson did a Jeff Kennett after one round of football in 2014, attacking the club's poor recruitment and, after the round-four Melbourne loss, called for the sacking of chief executive Greg Swann and the immediate departure of Stephen Kernahan.
His influence is not underscored by any sponsorship, only the fact he transferred his substantial and profitable gaming venues from North Melbourne and Richmond to Carlton. Neither the Kangaroos nor the Tigers appear to have suffered for the move, while Carlton's gaming profits diminish by the year given legislative change.
Internally, the board has debated selling its gaming interests in the hope of eradicating the Blues' multimillion-dollar debt and cognisant of shrinking profits and the growing costs of running the pokies. Director Ahmed Fahour supports the push.
Either way, the Mathieson name has damaged the club badly this year and, given his close family and business connections to Carlton's gaming interests, it remains extraordinary that Bruce's nephew Craig sits on the board at all.
Another board member whose time must surely be up is football director Adrian Gleeson, who, after seven years in the role, cannot claim to have achieved success.
The presence of billionaires Raphael Geminder - the son-in-law of vice-president Jeanne Pratt - and Zac Fried only contribute to the impression that Carlton is a club supported by such untold wealth that membership is not an issue. In truth, neither contributes significantly outside of Geminder's connection to the Visy Group, which holds naming rights to Princes Park.
So there are four names right away, along with the already departing Kernahan, whose resignations could lead to constitutional change and whose absence from the board table would not prove a major issue for Carlton.
It should be a source of acute embarrassment to the club that so many Carlton directors appear intertwined by outside business when relatively small amounts of their money actually comes into the club. This old practice is outdated and only serves as a reminder of the damaging old-school deal achieved by Ian Collins and Demetriou to shift the Blues' home games to Etihad. The agreement served a number of short-term and conflicting interests but managed in the long term to further shrink the once-powerful club and further disenfranchise supporters.
So change will come to Carlton on Monday when Mark LoGiudice wins the presidency. Whether he has the strength to shed the Blues of their significant off-field baggage remains to be seen, but the examples of Hawthorn and Geelong would indicate that such a move will prove the first step to sustained on-field success.
