A DISAPPOINTED Michael Voss spoke to the media following Carlton's first loss of the season to Adelaide in the opening game of the inaugural Gather Round.
Here's what he had to say.
On the first quarter:
“We were heavily beaten around the ball – when you lose that battle, you lose important territory on the field.
"We weren’t able to turn the tap off in terms of their efficiency inside 50 metres. They’ve had 20 looks at it and they’re scoring 50 per cent of the time. That makes it hard going. You can have quarters where that can happen, but you can generally hold on a little better than that.
“We weren’t able to do that which put us under pressure. There was a response with the playing group and I’m pleased they stuck that out for two-and-a-half quarters.
“I felt like it was really evenly balanced throughout the rest of the night. We just had to have a throw at it at the end to see what impact we could have on the scoreboard. Clearly that last little bit went against us but, we had to have a go at it to see what we could close and we couldn’t.
“But, when the whips are cracking, you’ve got to be there at the start and we just weren’t.”
On the opposition and occasion:
“We tip our hat to our opposition – they were just too good. We needed to turn up better than that and we didn’t, we certainly knew what their capacity was.
“It was discussed around the importance of this particular round, the focus of what this round brings. We had a great opportunity to kick off that weekend with this game, so there was going to be extra scrutiny and focus on the game and we were looking forward to that.
“We’re well supported and we didn’t do the right thing tonight. We didn’t come at the start and - at an away venue on a really important occasion - we were on the back foot.”
Message to the team following the game:
“Accept what comes our way – we can’t do much about that.
“We can only go about it in the coming week and the next opponent we face – that’s all we get the chance to do. What will be said, will be said – whatever comes our way we accept that.
“What we’ve got to do is pick-a-part - like we do every single week - what worked and what didn’t work and then look at it and see what we can put into action immediately.
“There will be some other longer-term things that we need to continue to address, but we get two-or-three days away, so we’ve got a bit of a longer week this week. We’ll take those to have a rest - because we need it - and then we’ll get into the next week and we’ll prepare accordingly and we’ll keep doing the same things.”
On similarities to last time the teams met:
“You certainly lean on past games you’ve played against them - so you get a bit of an understanding of what they did and how we played that game. We looked at it as we needed to but we just couldn’t execute early.
“What I am at least pleased with, is that we stayed connected as a footy team for two-and-a-half quarters and it was evenly balanced there for a period of time. The inside 50s and efficiency inside 50 was just playing too big of a role across the night.
“Even though we were back in the fight, going inside 50 we were just completely inefficient. Every time they went in it felt like they were going to score.
“That’s when you want ascendancy in the game. That’s when you want to be able to peg that scoreboard back a bit and you go into half-time with a bit of a look. And we did, we just weren’t able to drag it in well enough.”
On Saad and McGovern:
“[Saad has] hamstring tightness and that’s all it is.
“We just weren’t prepared to take that risk. He felt that it was starting to tighten up a bit too much, there was no incident. We’ll assess it as we always do across the next couple of days but, we hope that’s all it is.”
“[McGovern] had some soreness there, some residual soreness across the week. He trained during the week so we didn’t think there was any problem. But, he did pull up a little bit short in warm up so we did have to make that change. We just weren’t going to take that risk with being able to put him back out there.
On the return of Sam Walsh:
“There’s a couple of positives out of the game and that’s one of them. The fact that he’s been a complete professional over this period of time and can go do that when he hasn’t played a game of footy at all and prepare the way he has.
"He’s a real professional."
On facing the Saints next week:
“I’ve seen them in the last couple of weeks up close and they’re in good nick.
“We’ve started the year in good shape , this was not what we wanted and we’re pretty disappointed. Just to be able to be on Thursday night and kick this round off, that in itself means something to us. We don’t take that for granted and the opportunity that we got.
“We were really disappointed with the way we started but, that doesn’t mean we don’t put a laser focus on what next week looks like and put the same attention into the next opponent we play, and respect every opposition we play against. There’s one in really good form, so we look forward to the challenge.”
