TRENDS come and go, right?

The talk of the footy world in recent weeks has been the four-week stretch of byes — and, most notably, the record of teams who have come off the rest the week prior.

All eight teams who have come into a game ‘fresh’ compared to their opponents have fallen in the last three rounds of football, which is the same task that’s in front of Carlton when it takes on Hawthorn this Sunday at the MCG. 

After waiting a while for a win, Blues star Sam Docherty doesn’t want to let that feeling slip anytime soon.

“Every team does different things in the way they train, how much they do, how much some senior boys do versus the younger boys. It’s for greater minds than me to figure that stuff out,” Docherty said on AFL 360.

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Back from the bye, Docherty joins AFL 360

Watch what Carlton star Sam Docherty had to say when he joined AFL 360. Vision courtesy of FOX Footy.

“From our perspective, I was back in at the Club [on Tuesday] and had a really good session on the track. We’re geared up for the Hawks this Sunday.

“If you’re asking me for the bye, I’ll take it any day of the week to give the body a rest . . . we played a solid game of footy the week before it, but it’s about trying to maximise the rest you get as a player through the bye period and maximising it on the way back out.”

That “solid game of footy” saw the Blues produce their best offensive display for quite some time, particularly in the second quarter, when they accounted for the Gold Coast Suns.

However, Docherty knows that it’s more than just one game that Carlton will need to turn the ship around.

Mentioning some of the improvements made in specific areas in the build-up to that last game, Docherty cited an oft-used term - “emotional nourishment” - while also saying that it wouldn’t just be one quarter of football that they want to display.

He said that message was reinforced AFL Senior Coach Michael Voss upon the resumption of training following the week off.

“I know it was a pretty spectacular 30 minutes of footy, but that in itself is probably not the bit we’re chasing . . . more broadly, it was around the whole of the game that we’ve been chasing,” he said.

“[Voss] has got a really clear picture of what we want to be as a footy club . . . I think our connection is really helping ‘Vossy’ in the role he’s in. It can be a lonely seat at times, the Carlton gig: when the seas turn on you, it can be pretty tough, but he’s going really well.

“I think he would’ve enjoyed the break and some time away, but he was back in there barking orders and getting us going.”

Docherty also wouldn’t be drawn into any apparent negative discussions on how things were tracking within the playing group.

“I’m inside the Club, so I know it’s not true.

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Docherty: There's been a lot of stories about us

Sam Docherty spoke on the camaraderie and connectedness of the playing group when he joined the panel on AFL 360.

“There’s a lot of stories that have been written about us in the last 10 weeks because things haven’t been going well. People are trying to find holes — trying to find holes within the footy club, trying to find holes within the players, the coaches, the Board, everything. There’s been a magnifying glass on us.

“When things aren’t going well, ‘there has to be something wrong’ and ‘there has to be something going on’ within the football club. Everybody goes searching for that.

“We weren’t winning games, and that’s the cold hard reality of it. But that doesn’t mean the culture within the footy club is crumbling. That’s not the reality of AFL footy clubs: sometimes it is, but in this case, it’s not.”