ON THE first day of the 2023 pre-season, Michael Voss was consistent with his messaging that he outlined to Carlton members late last week.
Now into his second year as senior coach, Voss has the ability to add some layers to the foundation he put into place last season and focus on the collective getting better.
Here's what he had to say.
On the expectation of early pre-season:
"We won’t fire the players up too early, so it’s pretty simple for them: just turn up on day one and get out and have a kick of the footy and get familiar with one another.
"A lot of the first day is spent on finding out what everyone has been up to do and what holidays have we been able to have. The expectation for us this time of year is just to get better: that’s been the overriding messaging since we left, we have to find a way to get better.
"We fell short last year so the reality of that is we have to find ways to get better. Thankfully the boys have really embraced that message, we don’t know what that looks like until we get through pre-season but this time is about getting ready."
On the early return of senior players:
"Barring a couple, pretty much everyone is here, which is good to see. As we know, excellence is all around choice and for them to be able to come back early.
"They’ve had a lengthy break but the environment we’re trying to create is one that they really want to be at. They’re a really strong connected group and they like each other’s company and the fact that they’re coming here a little bit early speaks to some of the drive."
On the game plan and consistency:
"We’ll continually refine [our game plan]. That’s important because last year, we still have to find ways to get better but a lot of our focus was centralised on making we sure we could play the system a little more consistently.
"If there was a theme across the year, it was when we lost our way in those moments and we strayed from what we valued, that’s when we fell away as a football team.
"Building that cohesion, building that time together, being familiar with the system that we’re asking, make those tweaks that we need to be able to make to get us to the level we need to be at. We’ll be really emphasising the detail around our roles and what needs to get done in those moments."
On last season's results:
"We look at the whole season, the body of work and that is part of the narrative. We have to understand that, but we’re not going to look at two games: we’re looking at 10 months of work that we’ve spent together, so that tells us something.
"We accept that that is part of the story that we need to own. We’ll own that and the reality that we weren’t good enough to make it. Now it’s up to us to make sure we get to work and we’ve got plenty on, there’s plenty of detail to follow up on and we’ll utilise every session we get to bridge that gap."
On raising the standards:
"When you get the chance to do that, you get to deep dive on a few things: you get to add layers onto what you want to do and the players walk in with a very different feel to last year. We were coming in not sure with new coaches and we’re basically training in a whole new way: there will now be some familiarity, but at the same time there will be points to challenge with this group.
"We have to raise the standard, that’s what this pre-season is going to be about – making sure we raise the bar, raise the standard and I know if we do that and can implement that more consistently, then there is a real top end here that we can replicate.
"We weren’t able to replicate that to the level we needed to, so if we can do that a little bit more often, we’ll put ourselves in a really strong position."
