CARLTON AFL Senior Coach Michael Voss remained consistent with his message coming out of the Round 13 win over Essendon as he has throughout the entirety of the season.
There were things to like and things to work on.
However, one thing he wasn't going to take away from was the emotion of the victory, which was Carlton's third consecutive triumph over the arch rival.
This is what he had to say: you can watch the full press conference here.
On his three-quarter time address:
“I thought our first half was really strong, probably our first two and a half quarters. We strayed from doing some little things well which we had been doing earlier.
“I think we’re still in that phase where we’re learning to win and win properly. We acknowledge there’s still growth left in us.
“When we talk about expectations, people talk about expectations on where we’ll finish but our expectations are that we stay with what we’re trying to and play a certain way. They’re certain behaviours that we need and we need to stay on that.
“It was reinforcement of being able to do that.”
On method over result:
“That’s all we ever talk about: what is our way.
“The scoreboard becomes irrelevant because we take greater pride in how we get ourselves into those positions. That’s something that has been a strong emphasis for us in the first half of the season and will continue to be.
“I don’t set any limits on what this group can do, clearly there is capacity to do something pretty good. We’ve got to stay at it for longer and there are times when we stray from that when we put ourselves in really strong positions.
“We’ll keep going to work on it and making it really clear. I imagine when we start bridging that gap, results will go more in our favour.”
On celebrating victories as they come along:
“From day dot, you’ve probably heard me talk about this every time I sat here is that we celebrate the four points. This is an extremely hard environment which we play in and we take nothing for granted for what we’ve been given, because we have to deserve it.
“There was a lot going on around the game about Essendon and what they were celebrating: it was a really important night for them. The players got themselves really prepared for that, but more importantly we locked in on the way we wanted to play.
“What I’m pleased about is our players were able to adapt and we won a slightly different way. Some of our back-half transition was fantastic: we’ve been doing a lot of work on that.
“We didn’t win the centre-square bounce and lost some territory, but we were able to win the ball and be quite efficient with ball in hand.”
On Adam Cerra’s injury:
“It’s hamstring tightness. Until he gets scans, like we tend to do when we get to these, we’ll wait and see on what it looks like.
“We certainly hope it’s on the minor end, but it’s hamstring tightness at the moment: we’ll get that assessed.”
On Caleb Marchbank’s successful return:
“There is a huge positive.
“Seeing Caleb Marchbank back there and being able to roam that backline, it’s a great story of persistence and resilience. He’s had a lot of challenges.
“That journey of him being able to get back to play AFL football and be out on the MCG, it’s been far longer than my time here. The boys absolutely love him and he’s a really important part of what we do.
“We need to be realistic here: if we can get him winning his battles and joining in as a good teammate, his performances will only climb from here.”
On playing in big fixtures in recent weeks:
“[Next week] is the third one. You talk about the last few games we’ve had with Collingwood stepping into Essendon stepping into Richmond.
“I said to the players, we should be really grateful that we get the opportunity to play in front of such big crowds. We should never take that for granted.
“We have a large supporter base. The style we’re playing, our supporters are clearly feeling connected to that and the way we’re coming along and we’re really grateful.
“We can’t wait. It’s great to be involved in these games and we want to be involved in more.”
