PLENTY to celebrate, but far from the finished article.
AFL Senior Coach Michael Voss said his side's commitment to the plan was first rate against Port Adelaide, but there were still a number of elements the Blues needed to tidy up.
Carlton led from start to finish in the 50-point win over the in-form team in the competition, with ruthless efficiency going forward and standing up with backs to the wall when called upon. This is what Voss had to say.
On Harry McKay:
“He’s hobbling around in the change rooms, but we’ll obviously wait until Monday to get the scans and follow it up from there.
“I’m not even too sure what the initial prognosis is, so we’ll wait to get it scanned before we assess what the damage. Early diagnosis, no [not worried about high severity], but we’ll wait to get the scans and full information.”
On Jack Silvagni’s performance:
“He was a standout. To be able to hit the scoreboard the way that he did and the role we’ve asked him to play, it’s a tough role to be able to do that, playing second ruck and compete there as well as going forward. He was certainly one of those guys.”
On Jesse Motlop’s impact:
"It was pretty impressive. Port defenders were trying to support in the aerial contest, so Charlie had to take his turn to get the ball to ground. They were able to do that, but some of the smalls got to work and were able to hit the scoreboard.
“We had a lot of different types of goalkickers in there, and a shoutout to ‘Mots’ for being late in the team and having the impact he did in the first half. He wouldn’t have dreamed of that being what his night looked like! He got very energised by it. To be able to bring that pressure in the front half when we needed to and have that presence when the ball hit the ground, it was an important part of the game.
"The next man in did a role for us, and that’s what we’re asking our players to do: to come in, have an impact with their role and make sure they contribute with somebody else and the role they’re able to do. His last couple of weeks in the VFL have been pretty strong, so there’s no hesitation in bringing him in."
On the selflessness of Charlie Curnow:
“We’re all sharing the load better and we’re clearer on the roles we need to get done, and we’re buying into others. We’re prepared to take a back seat if we need to. I’ll highlight Charlie’s effort tonight: he wasn’t sharing in the goals, but his ability to control the drop and get the ball to ground to bring others into the game was a real highlight.
“Port defenders were trying to support in the aerial contest, so Charlie had to take his turn to get the ball to ground. They were able to do that, but some of the smalls got to work and were able to hit the scoreboard.”
On Matthew Owies’ pre-match withdrawal from the team:
“It’s his calf, it tightened up in the warm-up.
“He was on the ground and he couldn’t get going for whatever reason, he felt like he was tightening up. Like anything, it’s probably not going to get better when you start in the game, so we had the emergency there and a like-for-like replacement, so we went with it. “
On what the numbers said:
“In terms of the numbers themselves, we were down a couple in the end at centre bounces but midfield-wise, we were quite strong. That tells me given the overall number, we lost the bookends.
“We were able to change up what we needed to, they got going in the back end of the second quarter. Houston, Rozee and Butters were becoming quite damaging. Thankfully, it was for a short period of time: they always looked threatening, but we were able to get in an arm wrestle and fight our way back.
“In the last quarter, we really needed to get that territory on the field, and that was a really important part of the game.”
On elevating performance against a formidable opponent:
“The last few weeks we’ve been playing some good footy, but clearly when you’re playing against a side that has won 13 in a row, that’s another level.
They’ve overcome plenty of challenges throughout those 13 games, so to be emphatic with the way we played was important. What we walk away from the game with is understanding that there’s still work to be done within our system.
“We had 59 inside 50s which we can’t complain about, we’ve kicked a winning score, but we’ve had 62 inside 50s against us. It’s not the number we want to be fighting again. Their efficiency was quite low on the night and ours was pretty good. Tables have turned a little bit when it comes to that considering where we were five or six weeks ago.
“There were a lot of facets we were really pleased with, but with some of those numbers, there are still things we need to get to work on.”
On the impact of David Cuningham, Lachie Fogarty and Jack Martin:
“It’s tough to nail it into three, but it’s safe to say they’ve made a significant difference.
“’Fogs’ is really smart and he’s bought into the role we’ve asked of him, so it’s been pleasing to see him step. ‘Cunners’ I haven’t seen a lot of until more recent times, because he hasn’t been able to get out and play: it’s been nice to see that burst and acceleration at stoppage. I just think Jack is tough: he gets the footy and there are some people who make others walk taller.
“They’ve formed quite a strong relationship with our high-performance team, and they manage them really well: we’re getting great output from them.”
On the reaction to current commentary:
“I hope we give it as much attention to what we gave [external noise] six weeks ago. The reality is, whether people are saying bad things about you or good things about you, you have to treat it exactly the same.
“There’s other things we need to get better at, and there’s more improvement still to come. We stop and acknowledge the changes we’ve been able to make in our game in terms of the style of football we want to play, that’s been crystallised. We’ve still got to get after it.
“We played against a quality opposition today and we walk away going ‘that was a fantastic team effort, pressure was great, it was an even performance’. But now we’ve got to dig into the game and see where our next level of improvement comes from.”
