WITH Round 1 just a day away, Senior Coach Michael Voss is eager to see his team in action following a strong pre-season.

Discussing personnel, positional shifts, and season expectations, Voss is ultimately counting down to the first bounce at the MCG on Thursday night.

Here’s what he had to say.

On opening Round 1 against Richmond: 

"It does feel like footy starts now, we have a great opposition to play against and the rivalry is real, it has been for such a long period of time, it’s been traditionally a great way to kick off the season. We’re looking forward to that moment, to walk out there Round 1, 80 000 people, it seems familiar. 

"There is an opposition to play against and every team we play against is fully respected. I think we focus on the round itself, despite wherever teams have landed and where they’re at in their personal development, the reality is the results say that they’ve been close games.

"We have to recognise that Round 1 can throw up lots of different variables and then there’s the other part which is the expectation of how we want to play. Sometimes when you’re searching for that better version of yourself, the expectation is that you remain consistent when you’re playing, no matter when you’re playing. Whether it’s Round 1 or Round 23, we’ll expect the same things."

On the preparation for the season: 

"There are two parts to the season: the pre-season and the in-season. Pre-season is there to get you prepared the best you possibly can, so I think we’ve done that pretty well and then there’s the season itself. There’s no spruiking here right now, we’ve got the work ahead of us and we know that this is going to be about persistence, turning up every day with the right habits and that will hopefully get us the results we need in the end.

"We’ll start well, we’ve got a good and healthy list, and our preparation has been fantastic, I think if you did a straw poll across the competition, most would say that. Now we get to work, and this is where the real stuff begins, so we can’t wait."

On Sam Walsh: 

"He’s been tracking well for a few weeks, but like all things, it’s trying to be patient. I said to him the other day that I haven’t actually coached him in Round 1 yet since I’ve been here, so he’s missed every Round 1 so far. It’s nice to be able to have him out there, he’s been training with the group the last couple of weeks, so he’s more than ready to go."

On Charlie Curnow: 

"My experience has only been that he’s played a lot of footy. This pre-season has been a bit more challenging for him and he’s had to overcome a few things but if you’re asking about my history with him, he’s played a lot of footy over three years and he’s played pretty well.

"He’s the piece that’s missing, that’s obvious, so we’ll add that where we need to, but otherwise, we’re going pretty stable. If we can add someone like Charlie in over the coming weeks, which we hope is as early as next week, that’s what our expectations are and we play from there. We’d like to think that we’re also a team that can get the job done and we’ve got a series of players that can go out there, and if one is missing, we can still get the job done."

On Elijah Hollands: 

"He’s been really upfront with us on where he’s at, it’s been something we’ve been talking about a fair bit with him and monitoring and he felt the best course of action was to take some personal leave. For us as a Club right now, we support it and he’ll spend some time on himself and for us, we carry on with the season.

"What football clubs are very good at is the support we have and the resources that we have. There are some incredible professionals that we have here and we always say we talk a lot about football, but it’s also about life and the person and in fact, it’s more about the person than the football, and we’ll maintain that as a football club. We’ll support him the best we can, give him the privacy he needs and we’ve got to get on with what we have to do."

On Lucas Camporeale's debut and Scott's influence: 

"Thank god he heard his name! One of the best parts of footy is being able to let players know about their first game, you can’t help but think back to the first game you played and how you found out. That was quite memorable for him, being able to find out in front of our supporters, it was pretty special, Lucas’ parents being online at the same time, all finding out at the same time, it was quite special, he was very surprised.

"He’s well and truly earned it, I think we were looking at him in the early parts of pre-season and thinking he has some great attributes to warrant a spot in the future, but in the last month, he’s played some really strong football to the point where he’s pushed himself ahead of the queue. We’re really pleased to see his progression, and he’ll have many more games to come. He’s far from the final product but what we’ve seen, we’re really excited by. 

"We’re just that excited, it’s a great story. The fact that Scott’s time, 1995, plays his debut 30 years later and his son comes and plays Round 1. What Scott - and every dad in the same situation is - it’s about their story, and how they create their own journey. It’s not so much about the legacy of the dad, it's about what he wants to bring to the jumper and the version he wants to leave.

"Scott talks a lot about that and I think it’s such a great message to send that he has the support of his father like anyone and the support of a great Club, but at the end of the day, it’s his story to tell so I’m looking forward to opening that up in a couple of days."

On improving the defensive efforts from 2024: 

"We know that the needle has to move. If we’re going to impact the season, and teams talk about expectations of the year and where we want to finish, but at the end of the day, our ability to be able to advance as a football team is going to be based on how we defend better.

"We’ve gone after that pretty hard, so that means we’ve had to shift some of the magnets to see what we can come up with and over the course of the pre-season, what we’ve seen so far, we’ve really liked. SOS has been in the last month the final piece, coming off the ACL, but that group is different to last year and if you take note of the personnel, there are points of difference everywhere: you’ve got SOS there, Haynes in, Ollie Hollands playing a bit more half back, so there’s some genuine change and some mainstays as well.

"The fortunate thing is that they’ve spent a lot of time together over pre-season, working away at their relationships and cohesion, and we get to play it out against Richmond. The days of relying on your back six or seven to form the absolute defence is gone. It’s about team defence.

"I’d probably argue most of your defence is about your forward line now and the pressure they can provide up the field to help us defend better. We’ve all got responsibilities around that, what we’ve spent time on during the pre-season is understanding the expectations of our system. They’ve got their own individual responsibilities as a back six, but we equally expect our forwards to take on the same level of ownership."

On possible ruck combinations: 

"It's not unfamiliar to us. We’ve played a bit smaller in our front half with Harry able to come up and support that, 'Crippa' has been able to do a job in there, now with SOS being back, that’s an option we can do as well. They’re all options and have been well-trained. All those questions get answered over the next period of time. We’re looking forward to getting started like you all are."