"WE DON'T take it for granted."
AFL Senior Coach Michael Voss said playing in the Good Friday SuperClash was a perspective provider for the Club this week, and that his side embraced that aspect when playing on Friday evening at Marvel Stadium.
Celebrating the "real heroes" of the Royal Children's Hospital, Voss also acknowledged the consistent performance that the Blues produced in Round 3 against the Roos.
Here's what he had to say.
On Good Friday football and RCH ambassador, Ollie:
"We’re very fortunate to be playing in this game. We don’t take it for granted that we’re a part of this. The part of our build-up for the whole week has been centralised around the real heroes that we have here.
"Ollie has been one of those for us over the last couple of years and he’s had his own challenges as well, but it’s been inspirational for us to have him and his family around over the last few days."
On the positives of the game:
"I thought it was a really consistent performance. What we wanted to do today was to really respect not just the game itself, but the opponent. They certainly had us on notice watching them play last week and how dangerous they are with the ball in hand, they can do some damage out of their back half.
"To be able to do that level of pressure and that level of consistency that we had across the whole day, we had a couple of break moments, but given they challenged that space quite a fair bit, we were able to maximise our opportunities the other way."
On the forwards:
"[Harry McKay and Charlie Curnow] were great, but it’s obvious to highlight those two individuals. The story for me was sharing the load. When you look at the ground-level players, we put a fair bit of energy into how they bring the ball out of the back half and I think our smalls went to work, they were particularly impressive today.
"Not only defensively did they get the job done, but they were able to hit the scoreboard as well. We had 11 goalkickers today, so that was pleasing to have that. If you look at the stat sheet again, they weren’t massive stats by any stretch, everyone took their turn when they needed to which was the hallmark of the performance."
On Charlie Curnow:
"He’s ok, we had five minutes to go, and he didn’t fight me too hard. He’s fine. He did roll his ankle, but they were re-strapping and the clock was ticking, so we just thought we’d park him."
On Caleb Marchbank:
"He’s in concussion protocols."
On Harry McKay:
"He went through a journey like all of us did last year and he found some challenges he had to work himself through. It’s amazing when you take the time to work through that, and it doesn’t always fall how you want it to in that time. He’s been able to do that, he’s been able to use it all and put it in and refine his game.
"He’s as confident as I’ve seen him since he’s been here. If anything, he’s finally got some reward for a couple of great pre-seasons that he’s had."
On selection decisions:
"I’m quite happy to have those tough conversations if they’re needed. If we’ve got strong availability and they’ve got challenges for position, it’s amazing how that creates the momentum for you.
"We’re in great shape. You’re never too sure how the bye goes, it’s a very unusual place to have it but what we did want to do was work pretty hard up to the bye and get our training done and didn’t have a lot of breaks. We used that to get our mental rest and physical rest and we bounced into this week really well: I couldn’t fault their training over the last couple of weeks.
"That’s where they’ve turned into professionals, and understand the preparation required on a weekly basis to be able to play consistent football. That’s what we haven’t yet proved, we haven’t proved that we’re that consistent home-and-away team and we only get to do that with time."
On Elijah Hollands:
"The first conversation I had with him when the deal went through and he came to us was that he gets a fresh set of eyes, but what I do expect is that you put your head down and work hard and you earn respect through that way: he’s been fantastic at that.
"Harry’s been top three in the pre-season over the course of the pre-season and Elijah has been another as well. He’s put his head down, he’s gone about earning the respect of his teammates.
"What we’ve seen tonight was what we’ve seen a fair bit of over pre-season. He got to play in a role he’ll probably play a fair bit of and he had an impact, which was great to see."
