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Brett "Ratts" Ratten (born 11 July 1971) is a former Australian rules footballer and the current coach of the Carlton Football Club in the Australian Football League.

Ratten made his debut for Carlton in the fifteenth round of the 1990 season.

In a career lasting 14 years, he amassed many awards. He played mainly as an in-and-under midfielder, often escaping the attention of media and umpires early in his career. Somewhat infamously, he won the club's Best and Fairest award in their record-breaking premiership season of 1995, including a game in Round 17 against Fitzroy when he amassed 44 disposals, but failed to poll a single Brownlow vote from the umpires for the season.

He was awarded the Robert Reynolds Trophy (Carlton Best and Fairest) in 1995, and then again in 1997. He tied with Scott Camporeale in 2000. Ratten was a part of Carlton's premiership team in 1995. He played for Victoria in the State of Origin in 1996 and 1997. He was awarded All-Australian selection in 1997, 2000 and 2001, firmly cementing his skill in the centre. Ratten was inducted into the Carlton Hall of Fame in 1999.

After the retirement of Craig Bradley, Ratten was awarded the club's captaincy in 2002, a position he held until his own retirement.

Ratten's career was seriously plagued by injury. During his time in football, he had 8 arthroscopes on his right knee, 3 arthroscopes on his left knee and a medial ligament. His shoulder was also badly damaged in 2003, which ultimately led to Ratten announcing his retirement in the middle of the 2003 season.

After Ratten's retirement in the middle of the 2003 season, the captaincy was passed to Andrew McKay for the rest of the 2003 season. Carlton youngster Justin Davies was personally chosen by Ratten to immediately take his number 7 guernsey, waiving the usual one-year retirement for premiership players' guernseys, an offer happily accepted by Davies.

After retirement from playing, Ratten spent one year as an assistant coach at the Melbourne Demons, before leaving to take a head coaching role at the Norwood Football Club in the Eastern Football League's 2nd Division. He remained there until 2006, and then returned to Carlton as an assistant coach for 2007.

On 24 July 2007, Ratten was appointed as Carlton's caretaker coach for the remainder of the 2007 season, following the sacking of Denis Pagan. On 20 August 2007 he signed a contract as Carlton senior coach until the end of 2009. In his first full season at Carlton, the club finished 11th with ten wins. In his second season, Carlton finished 7th with thirteen wins, ending a seven year finals drought, the longest in club history.

[edit] External links

• Brett Ratten profile on the Official AFL Website of the Carlton Football Club
• Tearful Ratten calls it quits
• Brett Ratten page at Blueseum