MICHAEL Voss is looking to build on his side's performance from last week, hoping that Carlton can play a more consistent brand of football.
Tom De Koning will come in for Jack Silvagni (ankle) while Patrick Cripps also returns to the side.
Here's what he had to say ahead of the clash with Fremantle in Perth.
On Jack Silvagni:
"He just tweaked [his ankle] at training so we were hoping it was going to be minor enough that he’d come up. We assessed it this morning before we jumped on the plane and we decided not to bring him over.
"Certainly it’s very much on the minor end of the scale, given that it only happened yesterday. We expect it’ll probably settle down over the next few days, but we’ll probably have a further look at it later."
On Tom De Koning:
"It won’t change the forward mix too much. Obviously 'SOS' down there has been able to play a secondary role for us in the ruck, predominantly playing forward so we expect Tom to do something quite similar to what he was doing in the first few weeks.
"He went back and was able to play a reasonably strong game for us and competed pretty strongly in the VFL so he comes in with a little bit of form and a little bit more bit more time in the ruck, so he’ll partner up with (Marc) 'Pitto' as he has in the past."
On fade-outs:
"Well it is certainly something we had a big chat around earlier in the week when we debriefed the game. I don’t think we can shy away from that. We need to become a bit more consistent throughout the course of the game.
"The good thing is is that we’re really clear on what it looks like and we sort of understand that we’ve got a bit of work to do as a footy team, we always knew at the start that there would be things in progress that we needed to continue to address.
"We don’t want it to be as confronting as the way it turned up last weekend but we’re confident enough with some sustained intensity that we can address some of those issues.
"We’d like a short-term response. We like to think that it’s clear enough that it’s something we can change quite quickly but we also understand that there are parts of it that we need to play the long game on.
"The only thing is somewhat different I would find perhaps to what has happened in the past is that this group has been able to show enormous fortitude throughout games; so when we have been challenged, they’ve been able to find a way, they’ve been able to really lock into what we needed to be able to do and we’d like not to pull on it like we are when you get a lead like we have.
"Certainly there’s some improvement there that hopefully in the short term we can address."
On playing Fremantle at home:
"I don’t treat anyone any different to be honest. Any time you face a team on their home ground, it always adds a significant challenge to it.
"Probably most recently, we went to Gold Coast and we didn’t play a very good game there, they were able to win the ball around the contest and we just didn’t give ourselves a chance.
"It’s a great opportunity for us to be able to get away, Fremantle have been in terrific form and they’re going to be a really tough opponent."
On Patrick Cripps:
"We’re pretty confident, we were early on, but we also had to be patient just to find out what the damage might be and how long it would be just to settle down. He just over stretched it, it was really on the minor end but you’re never too sure how these things go.
"He was able to get out yesterday and train, he trained really well so he did everything he needed to to be able to play this game.
"If we have to be cautious with players, we’ll take a different approach. We always have the approach that when you cross the white line, you’re ready to go so there’s no excuses from our end.
"We expect Crippa to have his normal minutes around the ball and when he comes off, he’ll get his rest if he needs to play forward, but nothing will be different with his overall workload."
On earning respect:
"That’s still our driving motivation: to be able to earn the right. ‘Crippa’ talks about it a lot, he’s very passionate about it, earning respect back in the competition and the season is still really young.
"We feel like we’ve gone out there and competed really hard, we’ve put ourselves in some fantastic positions to win games of footy and you can look at what’s not there but we’re always putting the lens on what has been there and we’ve played a really powerful brand of football.
"People out there should know that we play a strong, contested game of football and we’ll compete right to the end. That’s something we can really use to base our leverage off."
