ACTIONS, not words. 

Michael Voss spoke to media for a lengthy press conference on Wednesday morning, but his overriding message was clear - it wasn't anything he said, but rather the actions of the collective on Thursday night, which would change things.

Here's what Voss had to say.

On the wash-up from last week:

“We had a few days to be able to sit in the disappointment of it. It gives you a bit of time to reflect on the way the game went, but also focus on what’s real and separate what’s not real. There was a fair bit of honesty in it: when you address it, you move on to accept it and then act on the things that have been important to us over the pre-season that we weren’t able to execute consistently over the night.

“The big thing for us were errors played a significant part of the game, and over the course of the night, the weight of those got a hold of us a bit. The ability to execute over the course of the night, we weren’t able to do. We’ve spoken about this a fair bit, the narrative hasn’t changed and nor has the focus - we need to be able to defend better as a group. If things aren’t working in moments, it’s how you stick to that and make it hard for the opposition. We didn’t do that, and gave a window to the opposition and they took it.”

On the players’ reaction:

“You don’t have to tell them certain things. We have to be able to be big enough to accept that the standards weren’t acceptable. We don’t miss that, and we also don’t miss the reinforcement or opportunity to look at what worked well - throughout the game, we put ourselves in a really strong position and defended exceptionally well… but that was for a half. We didn’t finish the other half.

“You talk about errors and inefficiency and not being able to take our opportunities over the course of the game, we had 34 forward-of-centre turnovers. We’ve been inefficient forward of the ball as recently as a week ago, this doesn’t just disappear - last year we were a very efficient team on any mid turnovers. On the night, it didn’t work out that way, so we’ve gone about trying to simplify it and get some clarity on what it needs to look like to make the most of our opportunities.

“That’s the facts, and we deal in the facts.”

On staying the course:

“We don’t separate, we don’t blame. We’re really confident in the body of work over the course of the pre-season. I couldn’t be more impressed with our prep: it seemed a bit unusual to me what turned up, that doesn’t mean it’s not addressed. We’re trying to find the version where we’re consistent no matter the circumstance. The information we’re getting back is we’re not that yet.

“We reinforce the things we want to play like, and sometimes in the instances where things don’t work well, you’ve got to double down on those things - you can’t just say ‘that didn’t work, there were a few errors, let’s go in a different direction’. That’s not strong leadership. That’s folding to a noise, if you want to call it that. If you’re rehearsing to something for a period of time and you’ve seen it work and execute, you need to transfer that on the weekend.”

On the context of a long season:

“That’s the context. We have to accept that. What you can do is make it bigger than what it is, but you also need to find the balance that it can’t be ignored. We let ourselves down on the night.

“It doesn’t matter what I say here today, it’s what we do next. That’s all I’m concerned about. How do we turn up? How do we bring the pressure we need to give ourselves the chance to perform well? How, against a really good opposition, play ‘us’ more often and take our moments when we get them?

“It’s the day before the game, so it’s hard to answer questions about everything last week. I’ll just reinforce that at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what I say here today. It’s about how we turn up tomorrow.”

On the reaction to last week:

“Understandably so. As a football club, we’re all in it together. For us, every time we walk out there we want to make them proud - we let ourselves down in certain areas. All I know is that what we’ve built this Club off for the past three years is sticking together and being Stronger Together, come with the intent to make it as loud as we possibly can.

“It’s our first home game of the season: we want to pack it out, and that’s one thing our supporters have always brought - an energy in the stadium. That’s what we’re hoping we get. We’ve got to give them a reason to as well, to bring what we need to and play our part of the deal. At the end of the day, I want our group to be connected, embrace the moment, embrace the little things and if you can stay together as a team, you can execute pretty well.”

On discussion around Patrick Cripps playing in the ruck:

“You would’ve noticed he’s played there a fair bit over the last couple of years, it’s not unique. I imagine he’ll play there a little bit from time to time. He won a Brownlow Medal, he goes alright. He loves it, it’s something a bit different. You’ve seen across the competition that it’s not unique to us: the fact that it’s ‘Crippa’ might get it a bit more attention, but you’ll notice a lot of second rucks have varying size about them.

“It looks a bit different with Charlie playing… by the way, Charlie’s playing. We might change the strategy based on that because you have the extra tall ahead of the ball, so it does maybe change what you need from him.”

On Charlie Curnow’s impending return:

“It does help that he’s got an extra week under his belt. He possibly could have last week, but I think it would’ve been pulling the trigger too early. He’s well and truly ready. Speaking to him yesterday, he’s really clear and excited about getting back out there yesterday.

“We’re not in the conversation around one person is going to make a difference. What makes us difference is staying connected as an 18-man team, we’ve spoken a lot about squad mentality. That’s what gets the job done. As we look for the best version of ourselves, it has to include everyone and we’ll let the really good players bring their talent and our role players getting their job done. We’ve all got to buy into the same thing.”

On the prospect of an in-form Hawthorn:

“They’re in great form. You see the confidence that has built over time and been a pretty settled side, over the last couple of weeks their performances have been really strong. When you turn up here, of course I’m going to say we’re a strong chance.

“It didn’t matter last week if people said we’d win or lose, it doesn’t matter this week either. We’ve got an assignment to be able to get done, we’ve got the task ahead of us. We’ve got to lock in and get it done.

“You’ve got to appreciate you’re not going to win every duel. They’ve got good players behind the ball that can intercept, which fuels their game - adding those two players has helped them in that department. But collectively, there’s a response that’s needed. It’s not going to sit on one particular player… the first opportunity to get that right is to rock up with the right attitude, the right intent and execute as best we can.”

On the message he’ll reinforce ahead of tomorrow:

“Train it, reinforce it, cover off what we’ve been able to do over pre-season. What we’ve done is go back to what we want to value, our roles, the composure of how we go inside 50. We lost composure throughout the night, and one of those was obviously how we went inside 50. We hope to get that correction.

“The big thing to encourage is to play us. Sometimes it’s about the persistence and you recognise that every week it’s not going to look exactly the same. It’s going back to what you value. Every other part of the conversation doesn’t matter because it comes back to what do we want to value as a team, and making sure we continue to do that - whether it’s working or not. I want to give you a more complex answer, but I don’t have one - I really don’t care what I say, it’s what we do.”