page_title: Carlton Football Club
section_title: 1941–64
hierarchical_section_title: Carlton Football Club / Club history / 1941–64
caption_attribution_description: English: Australian rules footballer Bob Chitty.
context_page_description: The Carlton Football Club, nicknamed the Blues, is a professional Australian rules football club based in Melbourne, Victoria. Founded in 1864 in Carlton, an inner suburb of Melbourne, the club competes in the Australian Football League, and was one of the competition's eight founding member clubs in 1896.
  The club's headquarters and training facilities are located in Carlton at Princes Park, its traditional home ground, and it currently plays its home matches at either Docklands Stadium or the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Carlton has historically been one of the AFL's most successful clubs, having won sixteen senior VFL/AFL premierships, equal with Essendon as the most of any club; prior to this, it won six senior premierships, including two in the Victorian Football Association. The club has also fielded a team in the AFL Women's league since its establishment in 2017.
context_section_description: The VFL continued to operate through World War II. With the retirement of Diggins, Carlton secured the services of former Richmond coach Percy Bentley, who coached the club for fifteen seasons. Carlton continued to finish in or near the finals without premiership success through the war, before winning the premiership in 1945, one month after peace. In a remarkable season, Carlton languished with a record of 3–6 after nine weeks, but won ten of the remaining eleven home-and-away matches to finish fourth; Carlton then comfortably beat North Melbourne in the first semi-final, overcame a 28-point deficit in the final quarter to beat Collingwood in the preliminary final, then beat South Melbourne in the notoriously brutal and violent Bloodbath Grand Final.
  Carlton contested two more Grand Finals in the 1940s, both against Essendon, winning the 1947 Grand Final by a single point, and being comfortably beaten in 1949. Thereafter followed what was Carlton's weakest on-field period since Worrall's appointment in 1902, with the club reaching the finals only four times between 1950 and 1964. Finishing tenth out of twelve and winning only five matches, 1964 was Carlton's worst VFL season to that point in its history.
caption: Bob Chitty captained Carlton to victory in the 1945 "Bloodbath" Grand Final.
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