CARLTON'S Head of Football Brad Lloyd was firm in his stance on wanting to play finals when speaking on SEN Crunch Time this morning.
Noting the pieces are all there, they just need to fit them together, he believes Carlton has the resources, the people and the structure to put together more consistent and competitive performances.
Here's what he had to say.
On last night's first half:
"[The Bulldogs] got too much ground on us at the start, we just didn’t finish when we needed to early on. Our execution getting the ball inside 50 – we had plenty of opportunities and didn’t finish our work when we could’ve put some pressure on. I think when you do score goals, it brings energy as well when you’re defending so we didn’t capitalise and the Bulldogs did.
"Through the second quarter, it was a real arm wrestle and it was really hard to score for both teams. We let a couple of goals in really quickly, that really hurt."
On the half-time turnaround:
"Our execution early was really frustrating - missing targets - then we started hitting targets and when you start doing that, you get overlap run and that overlap run gets the ball in the forward line quickly and gives our forwards a chance. We also had some other options in Matty Owies and those types.
"We had the third quarter and a big start to the last but they kicked away at the end so whether we ran out of legs a little bit, we put too big a task ahead of us, it’s pretty disappointing.
"The only solace that I had last night was that I haven’t seen that in a little while - that style of footy - and I just saw a glimpse and some moments last night on what we can do so that was the one positive, but you can’t do it in the patches we did it in – it wasn’t quite enough."
On the forward structure and contest work:
"That’s the frustration internally and the external, we saw [McKay and Curnow do well] through a long period last year before we had a few durability issues and struggles with some personnel last year, we played quite well and just got pipped at the end and missed finals.
"We’ve had some good performances this year and some patchy performances as well. I think the effort has been pretty good all year, it’s just been the execution, missing some targets and Adelaide was probably the game where we got absolutely belted in the contest, but apart from that, our contest game has been really strong.
"There’s a lot of players in good form and a few that need to get moving a bit but they haven’t all played well at the same time."
On the expectations of the Club:
"After last year, we’re starting to build a really competitive side that can compete against most sides, so I think it’s fair to have some expectation on the team this year to compete and play well against good sides. We’ve been a bit off in that area, so I can understand the frustration internally and externally.
"We want to play finals, there’s no doubt about that, we’re here to play finals, we think we have the personnel, we think we’ve got the structure and resources so we want to play finals.
"We want to keep improving and getting better and we think we have what we need to do that, so that’s our focus. That's really clear from our point of view."
