AHEAD of a particularly big clash with Geelong on Saturday, Michael Voss wants his side to give themselves the best chance possible to get scores on the board. 

With both sides showcasing their contested strength throughout the year, Voss noted the importance of the middle battle, with the chance to secure forward territory sure to be a factor in the Round 18 game.

Here's what he had to say.

On the ladder-leader Geelong: 

"For us, it’s the next game. Every game we’ve played has had consequences at this time of the year and the trick in all of it is to keep the ladder and all the peripheral noise that provides and focus on what you need to be able to do.

"It’s going to be a big game. We’re expecting a big crowd, but importantly it’s the next game for us to go out there and show what we’ve got.

"It’s very easy to look at one game and say ‘that’s the game’, but you look at a body of work over time and the things that have impressed about Geelong is that their contest is really powerful.

"That’s something that we really pride ourselves on as well and we'll continue to reinforce. But we’d like some supply down our end to give our forwards a chance and we’ll try and minimise them as much as we can.

"Every game that I’ve participated in, it still starts at that for me and then it gives you a chance to be able to get your system flowing after that."

On Geelong's strong forward line: 

"They’ve got some through the midfield and some through the backline as well: that’s why they sit where they are.

"The challenge is really clear for us, whenever you play against sides that sit in the top line, they put stress on every part of your system. We’ve gone to work really hard on where that sits for us, but we’re far more reliable: we’ve got two or three good weeks under our belt of good form, in terms of system and our players.

"We’ve put ourselves in a great position to be able to challenge that."

On Lewis Young: 

"The development of 'Youngy' has been significant for us, the fact that he’s been able to step up and take those big or key forwards has been really impressive.

"He’s also shown some flexibility that he can play on different types: his development has allowed us to do a few different things as well if we need it. 

"His growth has been on a really nice trajectory in the early parts of the year and just the exposure that he’s had by playing footy in some ways, it’s been a bit sink or swim for us. We’ve lost some personnel, but the back six have supported him really well and to his credit, he’s gone to work really hard on his game and he’s improved a lot of facets on it: I’m particularly pleased with him."

On the 'next-man up' mentality: 

"It’s been embraced and what I’ve been impressed about, we always look for moments of improvement in the group. The way we’ve approached it, I’ve not heard any talk about who should be there or who is not there.

"We’ve got a couple of nice returns coming back this week in the VFL, but we’ve just carried on with business. We’ve believed in our system, we’ve gone to work on our roles, they’ve got great trust with on each other and we have to back that in when you play against a good opposition: we’ll need all that when we play tomorrow."

On Marc Pittonet and Mitch McGovern:

"They’ve missed a lot of football so we have to respect that. It’s not about one game: we want to build a number of games, so we feel this [returning through the VFL] is the best way to go about it to get the best chance to do that.

"We'll sit here on Monday and get some really good feedback on how they’ve gone and how they physically felt, they haven't played footy for a long time. We’ve got to give them the chance to get back out there and feel the grass under their feet and then we’ll work out what the next step is."

On the potentially mounting COVID challenge: 

"We’ve had some big conversations about it this week, we have to make some adjustments on how we operate.

"We might be able to manage it a bit internally, we’ll need to make some adjustments externally as well. We’ve communicated back to the players, but at the same time, it’s got to be business as usual.

"The landscape has changed a bit in the last little while and we have to respect that and we have to make changes accordingly."