IT WAS a slog, but it was four points added to the Carlton tally.

AFL Senior Coach Michael Voss was pleased with how his side went about it, absorbing pressure and keeping cool in manic moments. 

Here's what he had to say. 

On correcting from last week: 

"It was particularly pleasing: we’ve been going to work on aspects of our game right throughout the last 18 months.

"To be able to go back after last week and have a look at it and learn off it, there’s some guys there that had some tough learnings but what we were confident of was that our system would stand up.

"Tonight we were absorbing a fair bit with several minutes to go and it wasn’t going quite the way we wanted but in the last three-and-a-half minutes, I thought we executed it really well." 

On absorbing pressure: 

"There’s moments you absorb, because when you play against really good football teams like Geelong, they know how to come at you, they know how to put a surge on.

"If that’s three minutes, five minutes, 15 minutes, you have to sometimes just be able to absorb and that’s what we’ve done, we did that last week and we did it again this week.

"When I talk about being proud of the group, that was what I was proud about. We’ll keep emphasising those moments where we have to be able to do that and when we get our chance to get the momentum back the other way, hopefully we can capitalise." 

On Harry McKay moving up the ground: 

"I think that might have been a conversation with Ash Hansen and Harry when he was on the bench, just to come up and play a bit more wing for a while.

"To be able to close out that game for us and he did that really well, he was involved in some pretty good moments."

On the team working together and forward pressure:

"Obviously if you’re marking the ball and impacting on the scoreboard, you need less of it, but when it does drop on the floor, you’ve got guys that are getting after it really fast and it’s something we want to make a staple of our game style and the boys really brought that today.

"It takes three units to pull together: forward pressure, the mids bringing that real strong contested game and then the backs being able to absorb when they need to and I thought all three units did a great job today.

"We don’t have to dominate the forward 50s but we want to be in the fight. I was pleased that we got a few looks and were able to convert in the end."

On Ed Curnow: 

"We get to see the infectious energy that Ed brings to our team and the toughness and competitiveness that he brings.

"I said last week, he has a role to play for us and he was able to go into the midfield today, took a role on Guthrie and did a great job. He’s prepared to do anything and he just wants the best for this football club and that’s to be as successful as we can."

On playing in close games: 

"I said to the players after ‘it just had to be that way’. We had to win it really tough in the end, but we got the correction we were after which was really pleasing to see.

"You’d like to be able to put the foot down but I don't think we can be too fixated on how the finish was. We were pleased we were able to absorb and in a critical moment, we were able to do the right things at the right time."