EMBRACE the challenge.

Despite a five-day turnaround deep into the season, AFL Senior Coach Michael Voss would much rather the Blues focus their energy on the opportunity in front of his side ahead of Friday night football in front of a home Marvel Stadium crowd.

Confirming the addition of Marc Pittonet but Blake Acres' unavailability, Voss spoke on injuries, concussion protocols and what to expect from the Blues in the Round 20 clash.

Here's what he had to say. 

On Tom De Koning: 

"He’s fairing okay. He got the procedures he had to have over the course of the past few days, he’s settling well. It seems like it all went well, he’s still in hospital currently but we expect him to be out in the next day."

On Marc Pittonet: 

"Fairly safe to say I can confirm that selection today. He’s been in very good form, so having the luxury of having two rucks - two very competent ruckmen - is something that’s been a real strength of ours throughout the year. It’s 'Pitto’s' turn and he’ll step up for us. 

"We tend to focus on what needs to get the job done for tomorrow night so we’re all eyes in on that one. What we want from Tom is to have a big say at the end of the year, but right now, we’ve got a good opposition and Tom is resting comfortably. 'Pitto' has a job to do, he’ll step up and get the job done."

On Blake Acres: 

"He won’t play. We tried to get him going yesterday and he was a bit slower than we’d like so with the five-day turnaround, it’s worth him not playing. Someone will have to step up into that role."

On injuries affecting selection: 

"There are a couple of guys we’d like to have out there. Zac [Williams] is in that three or four-week mark, but it’s been a couple of weeks so he’s starting to move around, so we expect him to be available in the next couple of weeks.

"Despite a few changes, we’ve been reasonably settled over the last little while. We’ve been able to reward some VFL form, the squad has been in pretty good form, and that’s a healthy position to be in. Obviously, we’d like to avoid any injuries, but it does happen."

On the AFL memo regarding Harry McKay's HIA test: 

"We were asked to put a series of events together in the way we saw it. We were able to do that and they were comfortable with where that lies, so we move on. We’re comfortable we followed the protocols that we needed to.

"Our main priority is the health of the player in any circumstance, that’s the priority over anything. That remains our medical team's priority as well. 

"Harry’s been good. That doesn’t mean the process shouldn’t be run, but he was good fairly early, so we were confident he’d find his way back in. We always wait 24 hours to find out where that lies, to make sure he’s passed all the tests."

On the five-day break: 

"It is towards the back end of the year, but I also think it’s an opportunity for us to play a Friday night game. We understand the draw doesn’t line up exactly how you want it, but we do look forward to playing in really big games.

"Playing Friday night in front of our fans, that’s something as a Club we’ve really embraced. If that provides us the opportunity to do that in a really important game, then we’ll put our hand up for it. As we do know, we had a few tricky spots against North that we had to manage, so we think we’ve done that okay and the boys will be ready to go."

On Jaxon Binns' VFL performance last week: 

"The great thing about our form is we’ve had a lot of players that have been in some really good form over the last couple of weeks, so we continue to encourage that. I think his last two weeks have been particularly impressive as have a few others.

"We’ll balance that up against who is in there and the current roles we ask players to do."

On Adam Cerra's role across half back: 

"We thought what he did was pretty positive. To have something a bit different we can go to, throughout the game last week we had to call on a couple of guys to shift positions: Matt Kennedy went from full forward to full back in 20 minutes.

"[Cerra's] adjustment was really important to us. It gave us a different look forward of the ball and we had to tweak a few things to get the game back on our terms, we’ll continue to encourage that.

"It's not something where we’ll say he’s playing there until the end of the year, but if we can go to it, we feel like it’ll be useful. Looking at that back six or seven and just how cohesive they’ve been over the last period of time, it’s largely been settled."