“IT’S TAKEN a lot of work, the players are hungry, they’re certainly ready to go.” 

Speaking at the 2023 Carlton Hall of Fame ceremony last night, Michael Voss was adamant that his side is ready to compete. 

Comparing this pre-season to last, Voss told the room he’d seen improvement in leaps and bounds across all areas of the football department – particularly with the intensity of training. 

“We asked a lot of them last year, we’ve asked even more this year and we’ve asked them to step up and they have,” Voss said. 

“If I had to say one thing, we weren’t able to sustain the intensity from session to session and why that’s important is because we have a 23-round home and away season.

“We weren’t quite able to do that last year, but we’ve been able to emphatically do that this year and the guys are feeling confident off the back of it and getting some belief off the back of it.” 

On top of these new training standards, Voss noted that they’ve raised the standards in terms of connection on and off the field. 

Working on the relationships within the group and how that transfers to in-game performance has been a vital part of Voss’ plan since arriving at the Club last year. 

As well as connections between players and staff, Voss also stressed the importance of having connections between fans, supporters and all stakeholders – ensuring that they can make each other proud of their endeavours. 

“It’s crucial: the connection between players, units, cross departments, but then also how we connect with our supporters and our members,” he said.

“To be able to do that, one way that we have to be able to deliver is the way that we play.”

What Voss is adamant on is showing the true values of Carlton through the brand of football that they produce, with education on the past and the present keen agendas at the Club. 

“The fact that people can connect through [us], they like the way we play – we hope we’re valuing the right things,” he said.  

“We want to play with a really selfless attitude, we want to play for each other, we want to play a tough brand of footy and we want to play a powerful brand of footy. 

“We feel like those are the true Carlton values that have stood the test of time.” 

Heading into the practice match against Sydney on Friday night, Voss said they hand-picked opponents based on the challenges that they wanted to address.

Wanting to put the pre-season lessons to the test, the senior coach hopes that he can see real synergy between what the Blues have showed on the track to what they show on the field. 

“We wanted to specifically play against Collingwood and we want to specifically play against Sydney so they were targeted games almost, with the style that they play and the things that we were challenged on last year,” he said.  

“We’ve gone to work on those things – we saw some fantastic first up efforts individually but also the way we want to be able to play, so we’ll continue to look for that transfer and from our perspective, it puts us in a great place to start the season.”