WITH a significant finish to the home-and-away season looming, AFL Senior Coach Michael Voss is setting no limits on what his group can achieve.
Here's what he had to say ahead of Saturday night's clash with Melbourne.
On the Appeals Board outcome with Patrick Cripps:
“Clearly good news – to be able to have him available is obviously a good thing for us and we’ll get to finish out the season with our captain playing. It probably played out as we’d hoped, we maintained our read on it at the start and thankfully the Appeals Board saw it that way as well.
“Those kind of things are completely out of your control so you hand over to the people who look after it, who did a great job and put a lot of time and effort into it to get the outcome we got and the benefit of that is we get the captain playing.
“Our job is to focus on what we need to do. All our energy goes into what the next 24-48 hours looks like and how we get the best result we possibly can for the Carlton Football Club. A lot of our conversation all through the week has been around what we can control and what we’ve got to be able to control is making sure we go out and play the right way and bring that against a really good opposition. That’s what we’ve got ahead of us and we’re not going to take our focus off that.”
On the importance of the next two games:
“I mean, if something’s really obviously in front of your face it doesn’t really need any further reinforcement. Our energy has been focused on the way we want to play, how we want to play against Melbourne and the threats that they’ll put forward to us to prevent us from playing our best footy.
"We’re just looking forward to it – the next two weeks are really exciting. It’s great exposure for our group, we’re playing in two really big games, and it starts with Melbourne on the weekend.
"We expect there to be a really big crowd, we know the opposition really well and our challenge is going out there and playing our best footy. We’re pretty pumped about that, and excited about having the opportunity.”
On what a successful season looks like:
“Everyone will have a different outlook on what it looks like to them. I’ve said from the start that I’ll never put a limit on this group and there are some things that I’m enormously proud of that we’ve achieved throughout this year.
"We’ve been able to create so much transformation throughout this year and we’ve seen enormous growth. That doesn’t leave us satisfied.
"We feel like we’ve got more left in the tank, and we want to have a say in what’s left and we’re looking forward to that.”
On his expectations for the rest of the season:
“My expectation is that we stay connected as a footy team and play the style of footy that’s got us to this point of the season. That doesn’t come with a limitation: we’ve got to have our goals, absolutely.
"We don’t shy away from those goals, but I also haven’t put a limit on those goals and what that looks like. We’ve got some really important things in our process that we’re going to have to get right, and that we’ll have to correct pretty quick.
"That gives us the best opportunity to win games. Whatever ends up happening on the back of that will take care of itself.”
On instilling confidence with the fans:
“We’ve stacked up really well against some great opposition, so the capacity is certainly there. We’ve got to give ourselves the position to be able to go there again.
"The most important thing that Carlton fans should be excited about is winning games that matter – we’re in the bookend of the season and we’re really looking forward to getting out in front of them. We can’t wait.”
On the importance of getting a good start:
“Our prep has been really good. Clearly there’s detail that we need to get right, and it all starts around our effort and intensity around the ball, to give ourselves the best looks possible.
"We won’t stray too far from that at the start of the game, setting up the game with great effort and intensity, making sure we get our roles right and lean on each other from there.”
On bringing effort and intensity:
“From an environment point of view, it shouldn’t matter where you play or who you’re playing against and even what the opposition are bringing – you’re focused on what you need to look like and if you get that right you put yourself in the contest.
"With the body of work that we lean on, we know that there’s capacity in this group to be able to do that. We’ll lean on that: we’ll reinforce that and I’m sure we’ll start really well this weekend.”
