MORE conversion woes saw Carlton fall by 34 points to Essendon by 34 points at the MCG. 

When the Blues had the game in their hands, they couldn't capitalise on the scoreboard, while the Bombers did exactly that when the game was on their terms. 

AFL Senior Coach Michael Voss spoke on the inefficiency going forward and responded to the media's questions about the remainder of the season. 

On the loss overall and the feeling amongst the Club:

"We feel enormous disappointment. We come into the game to celebrate together, we want to celebrate as a team, we want to celebrate with our supporter base, so it hurts a lot – especially when there are parts where we played some dominant football in periods of the game but we’re putting enormous pressure on ourselves by not being able to finish our work.

"That puts pressure on your system because you don’t have your way the whole time in this game. Essendon was able to put its foot to the floor in the third quarter and score 7.1 and in the second quarter when we had the dominance, we kicked 2.5. Sometimes the game is simple like that, you have to finish your work."

On other aspects of their game: 

"We certainly had a lot more opportunities, having 56 inside 50s to 41 to the opposition. It wasn’t a lack of getting it there, it certainly wasn’t a lack of intent, but the reality is is that we haven’t been able to create scoreboard pressure.

"You can win contests, be great in defence and get the ball going there but if you’re not able to be more efficient around the inside 50 or even just finish the work, it puts pressure on your system."

On Essendon's dominant third term: 

"It was really disappointing. They certainly sustained their pressure throughout the whole game so we walk away winning the ground ball number really convincingly, but when we talk about the pure tackle number, we’ll have to go back and look at the vision why it was so low.

"Their ability to still put pressure on the ball carrier and still get at us and create that dominance, we just couldn’t get our hands on it through that seven or eight minute patch in the third quarter. Four or five goals later and the game gets away from you.

"We’ve got to be better than a team that wins the ball, we’ve got to be a team that goes back and pressure when it’s our turn as well, and certainly through that period of time we didn’t do that."

On the disappointment of the Carlton faithful: 

"We feel their disappointment, we absolutely feel their disappointment. We are frustrated at a certain aspect of our game right now that isn’t ticking over as well as we’d like."

On the focus moving forward:

"Our eyes are in, we’ve got some work to do and I’ll lead that. I’m firmly fixed on debriefing the game exactly the same way, that we have consistency in what we do and the environment that we provide and this one is just really clear."

On Patrick Cripps: 

"Sometimes players get out of form. He’s running through a bit of that, a few players have been in the same boat. He’s got a little challenge in front of him to be able to rectify it and I’ll back that man in.

"I know where his heart is and I know what he wants to be able to do for this Club and I know he’s absolutely desperate to play the best he can for the Club, it means a lot to him. I know he won’t rest until he can turn that around, and we’ll continue to lean on our leadership and lean on 'Crippa' to be able to provide that leadership for us."

On key focuses for 2023:

"I feel like we’ve provided a great environment for our players and we’ve been able to resource that really well over the last little while. We’ll continue to do those things that we need to reinforce within our program, within the system we want to play and the things that are really important to us.

"That won’t change in terms of our reinforcement with that over the last 10 weeks at the right time: we’ll sit back and review it thoroughly, but right now, we’re in the midst of a season and we need to play it out strongly."