FOUR crucial points.
The start was exceptional, the finish was nervy, but come the end of another heartstopper between Carlton and Melbourne, it was the Blues who came away with the all-important victory.
Taking stock of the game as a whole, AFL Senior Coach Michael Voss lauded the fight in his team, both in taking the game to Melbourne to start before finding a way to hold on against a Dees barrage to close the game.
This is what he had to say.
On his instant reaction to the game:
"To have a good look at it, we’ll break the game up a little bit. The start was really impressive, that’s how we wanted to make sure we got it. We realised Melbourne was on the back of a five-day break so we tried to get the jump: to be able to score like that early was important.
"I thought it was a genuine arm wrestle in the middle of the ground. The end was a bit different, but it won’t take away from the positives of the game for us. We’ve been fighting for a good month, I think we’ve been in some good form and played against some really good sides.
"We haven’t been able to get the wins on the board, so maybe that’s what it felt like in the last quarter. We needed to get the four points, and we walk away with that against a very, very good side."
On Nic Newman's tackle in the final seconds:
"It was pretty impressive. We needed a few moments like that to go our way late. They certainly had more than their fair share in the fourth quarter, and they stood up when they needed to. They fought back really hard, that speaks volumes to their resilience and hopefully it speaks volumes to the progression and improvement we’ve made over the last 2-3 weeks.
"It’s been something we’ve been chasing hard. To be able to absorb 20 inside 50s in the last quarter and still be able to hang on, I’m sure we’ll look back at it and say there were moments we’d like to do better and have better composure, but generally, I was really impressed with the win. It was a really good win.
"We’ve been talking about the phases of the game and how we want to defend as a team. I saw a real shift there. We walk away pretty happy with the result."
On defending with intensity:
"That’s where I feel the difference is going to be for us. Melbourne for a longer period of time have been able to get that part of their game in good shape. They were able to keep doing it for a bit longer over the course of the whole night, but we’ve shown that we’re quite good in that phase of the game over the last 12 months.
"We’re still in the infancy of its development, and it reinforces the importance of it. On the back of it, we can play the offence we want to play and we’ve got some exciting parts of our game that we like to play as well.
"But that’ll never be ahead of how we defend and what sort of contest we need to be able to bring to the game."
On Adam Cerra:
"Minor hamstring. We’ll get that scanned and see where that lies."
On Christian Petracca's influence:
"We tried a couple of different match-ups, and he was pretty hot. Matty Kennedy was trying to do a little bit of a job with him around the ball, he did too good of a job so Petracca went forward — so that was a mistake [for us]!
"He was sensational. He could’ve been a real difference for them. We talk about the collective a lot, but that seemed to make a really big difference. His individual performance was pretty special.
"But it took us as a collective to get the job done tonight. It wasn’t going to be one person, and thankfully we did."
On George Hewett starting as sub:
"We’re sharing the load. It’s a long season. Matty Kennedy played there last week and George took his turn, our small forwards have done the same job. That’s the approach we’ll keep taking.
"We’ve got a squad mentality that we want to get after across this whole season, we realise it’s a long year. We’ve been fortunate to be able to get some more bodies back and that will hopefully put more pressure on players and their positions. That drives the next level.
"We’ve got the personnel to keep finding form and keep challenging others. If we can share the load, that’s what we’ll keep doing."
On Sam Walsh's form:
"He didn’t actually miss as much of pre-season as you think he did. He missed the backend of it when games started to be played, but he actually got a full pre-season under his belt.
"That aside, he’s a competitive beast and got some really high standards for himself and the way he plays. It was always going to take him a little while to get into it, but it doesn’t seem like it does it? He’s just picked it up and gone with it, and he’s a very important player to us."
On the midfield collective:
"If you look at our midfield group, they haven’t played a lot together — when you talk about ‘Pitto’, Tom, Patrick, ‘Walshy’, Kennedy, George, Cerra. They haven’t played a lot of footy together. To build those relationships and cohesiveness you need, it takes a bit of time.
"They get along really, really well. They’re good teammates with each other, and the more we can get them out there playing together, the better we’ll be."
