SPOKEN from the heart.

Michael Voss lauded the fight of his playing group in Carlton’s six-point elimination final win over Sydney: the Blues’ first in September in a decade.

Setting the game up in the first half, the Blues were forced to hold on against a rampant Swans, with Voss conceding that there was plenty of room for improvement in the final two terms.

However, at the end of the day, he believed it was a result typified by a will to win — and that made for one proud coach.

This is what he had to say.

On the nerves:

“The last minute and a bit was interesting, wasn’t it. It had everything! It had big moments, it had plenty of mistakes, but somehow we found a way to hang on. 

“That’s what finals footy is all about: you never know when the moment is going to turn up, but you’ve got to be ready for it. We had a couple of really big efforts late to help us get over the line.” 

On what shone through:

“There’s a defensive resilience to us now. We’ve spoken about that all year, and it had to be a characteristic we needed to build within the team. We won on defence at the end of the game. 

“We didn’t have momentum at all, it was completely against us — and we certainly weren’t winning it through ball use. We’d like to have a few moments back going inside 50, changing angles a few more times rather than letting them intercept and get fast off of it. We’ll go to work on that. 

“But in behind that was a desperate team with a will to win, and probably in the end, we won on heart. That’s something we’re pleased with.”

On setting the win up:

“We played some really strong footy early. Not only did we have some of the things we wanted in the game, we were able to restrict Sydney and their ability to put speed on the game. That flipped in the game, so that’s something we’re going to have to go to work on: we were poor at times with being able to defend that. 

“To their credit, Sydney is a very resilient team, the runners-up from last year. They know their own moments, they’ve got some finals experience within that team. To be able to get the lead as we did and then hold on in the end was a special effort.” 

On Harry McKay:

“Harry will be in concussion protocols, he won’t be right for next week. It makes him unavailable for next week so we’ll have to look at what our forward mix looks like.”

On role players once again standing up:

“In the past as a footy club, we might have been accused of waiting for our stars to do the job to get us over the line. That hasn’t been a characteristic of this football team this year. 

“I understand there’s a lot of focus on players that haven’t played finals football and how long it’s actually been, but what we’ve done on the back of it is play really significant roles and the players have really embraced that. They’ve gone after it hard, and they’ve built trust amongst each other within the team. That’s where our difference maker has been. 

“Externally the brilliance may get spoken about, but internally we value the roles that our players have played. Having Cuningham come in, Fogarty, Owies, Cottrell, Acres being able to do his job — we’re winning off everyone being able to take their turn. That’s been pretty special.”

On Blake Acres proving his fitness:

“I thought off the back of the game two weeks ago, I didn’t think he was much of a chance until the doc called me and told me he’d be a good chance to get up. 

“He did the fitness test yesterday and I thought he’d come in quite sore, but he actually didn’t at all: he went in, did all the tackling he needed to do and had no limit in his movement whatsoever. He passed it with his flying colours, and it seems he’s come out of it okay.”

On what it means to lead Carlton to a finals win:

“I’ve been taken by the energy, I probably underestimated that energy as well. It’s been 10 years playing in finals, and walking into this week, it felt like a celebration that we’ve made finals. 

“It was really important to acknowledge that we’ve made that important milestone as a club, but we’ve still got more in us. It wasn’t based off anything other than there was capacity in this team to do more, and we’d be settling for less to do otherwise. 

“We also have to acknowledge that it’s been a fair journey for our supporters, it’s been a long wait. We’re just really pleased to look across fences and see smiles on faces. 

“I love seeing our past players and how proud they are of our team now, the way that we play. I love that we can connect in and they’re really proud of how tough we play football. I hope they walk away with a few other things tonight. 

“We play in close ones and we were able to get the job done tonight again. We’ve been accused of not getting those jobs done in the past, but we’ve gone to work on ourselves. We’re thriving in those moments . . . I don’t know if thrive is the word I’d use today! But we certainly got through it.”

On the parallels with the Round 22 win over Melbourne:

“I think it’ll help, but I think this one was more important because all that energy, we feel. The players have felt that energy of being able to play - in some instances - their first final. We have been limited in that experience, but we’re not now.

“The environment is actually quite familiar to us: we had 92,000 people here tonight, that’s familiar to us. Maybe finals isn’t, but we will be able to take some things out of that game and learn a lot. Add a bit more composure in our game in critical moments, and we’ll get that in our favour a bit more than what we did.”

On Matthew Owies’ eventual goal and subsequent reaction:

“I did say before the game to embrace mistakes and errors. My first reaction wasn’t that! Once I sat with it for a little while, I thought ‘oh well, there you go’, because you can’t preach something and not follow through on it. I’d like him to take his moment there from one metre out, if he doesn’t mind. 

“Fortunately the guys were able to keep moving on, because we were imperfect in that second half. We made so many errors and there’s a lot of things we’d love to have back. I just think we won on heart. We won with defensive resilience and we won on heart.”

On Carlton’s appetite for the contest:

“I think we’re undersold in the transition part of the game. Our best that we’ve produced throughout this year, a lot will talk about our contest game and how we set up our game. Every team sets up their game from contest: there isn’t a team that doesn’t want effort and intensity around the ball, there isn’t a team that doesn’t want an outnumber where the ball is going. 

“That’s a strength of ours, but what we’ve been able to add into our team is how we defend it. We want to be better at maximising our opportunities, but the thing we’ve improved is when the opposition has the ball, we get to work. We put that 18-man, connected system into place and it helped us tonight. 

“It wasn’t perfect, but it helped us.” 

On what momentum could bring:

“That we can’t quantify. That’s an intangible. You can’t grow confidence or belief without having a body of work. You need your body of work and important flags in the ground to reference back to, and we’ve used plenty of those.” 

On Jack Martin’s last quarter:

“He had some great moments at the end where he stood up. Externally, we talk about moments in finals, but you only ever talk about them in retrospect. You never know it at the time, but he had a couple of those tonight. 

“He had a few deeds that he had to step up in and the team needed to step up in, and he’s done that for us. He’s been a really important addition to us. That group of people I just spoke about before, they’ve come in and done their jobs. He’s come in and provided a third marking target. 

“He’s tough and hard at the ball — not many talk about him like that, but he is. He adds a bit of leadership out there for us at the same time. He’s been an important addition.”

On what a finals win means to the group:

“There’s one thing to experience it, but it’s another thing to thrive in it. We were able to do that. To get a win under different circumstances was really impressive: you’ve only got to see the reaction in the rooms. Everyone is ecstatic with the result. 

“It’s not really a time to debrief about what we did well and what we didn’t do well. We’ve said all along that we want to stay completely present to what’s in front of us. 

“We’ll look at this in two days, put it to the side and then we’ll fixate on Melbourne. We’ve played them recently, so we’ve got an idea of how they’ll structure up. It’ll be another big we’re looking forward, and I’d say another 92,000 sitting in the stands.”

On his personal path to being back coaching finals wins:

“It’s been a journey. It’s been a journey for all of us. I don’t individualise it: this thing’s absolutely nothing to do about me. 

“It’s got to do with our people, our Club and that’s what I’m really proud of. It’s an important Club moment. It’s taken a lot of effort and a lot of decisions to be able to get back to his point in time, and right now we get to embrace that. That’s all I’m concerned about.”