IT WAS a disappointing performance for the Blues as they faced an in-form Dockers outfit at Optus Stadium. 

Here's what Michael Voss had to say on his side's second loss of the season. 

On the game as a whole: 

"[It was] a little disappointing. We couldn’t quite get the flow of the game or the flow in our game across the night. We certainly couldn’t get the ball in good enough positions on the field often enough.

"You build your threats and your opportunities to score from your positioning on the ground and we weren’t able to do that tonight. Credit to Freo’s pressure around the ball and their ability to keep it in their half was a real strength of theirs so they challenged us for most of the night." 

On Marc Pittonet's absence:

"It doesn’t help, you end up having to shuffle your team around. It’s not unique, the ability to be able to adjust and adapt and be able to throw some positions around to make up for it, that happens often in games.

"'Pitto' is a very important person to us and gives our mids a good look. I thought when Tom (De Koning) was in the ruck, he competed pretty well against a really good ruckman, so he got his looks but obviously we had to find other ways to fill that." 

On the difference from previous games: 

"I don’t think it was one quarter, we had periods in each quarter that we were able to get the game a little bit in our favour. There were large periods of time where the game was in an arm wrestle.

"Our ability to capitalise on that and take our opportunities, but also when the moment requires, to defend long enough for us to be able to keep the scoreboard in a real arm wrestle, was difficult to achieve today.

"We weren’t able to capitalise, we weren’t able to keep the ball in our half long enough to be able to build any sort of pressure but when it was our turn to defend and hold on, they were able to find a goal and keep that separation on the scoreboard." 

On Patrick Cripps and the midfield: 

"He’s had a really strong start to the season. He’s certainly getting his hands on the ball a lot, I think collectively as a midfield we probably lowered our colours a bit tonight -- credit to Freo there, their pressure around the ball was quite good.

"We somewhat transferred the pressure to the next person rather than take the metres that we needed and win our battles further up the field. We could’ve identified that or changed that a little bit earlier than what we did, and they were able to strip the ball back and get the ball going in their half.

"That had some challenges but certainly there were some personnel in there tonight that were able to get a reasonably strong game."

On the next steps: 

"We’ll go back and look at the game and review it pretty hard and there’s a couple of things we need to continue to address.

"As we’ve spoken here before, I think there are things in our game that are real strong points and that we need to get back quick but then there are other parts that we need to take a longer view on.

"We’ve got to make a bit of a slow burn and keep working away at it, take every session that we can to improve."