THE CARLTON Reserves came up just short in their Round 4 Good Friday clash against North Melbourne.

Still seeking their first win of the season, the Blues went down by two points to the Roos in a tight contest at Arden Street: here’s what development coach Tom Lonergan had to say.

On his thoughts post-game:  

“It was pretty tough conditions obviously for both sides, but I just felt we had our opportunities early in the first half and we probably left a few on the table.

“Late in the second quarter, we let ourselves in some of our contests - especially aerially - and allowed them to get back into the game. They had a few threats forward of the footy, so they went into half time in a reasonable position.

“Then in the third quarter, the ball was played mainly in their forward half. We defended for a long, long time, and they were able to put some scoreboard pressure on us off the back of that.

“We fought it out in the last reasonably well, it was a bit of an arm wrestle. We probably needed to have a little bit more dare with the football, especially with the breeze.

“We got a nice look at some players, and some of the younger boys were really pleasing.”

On what worked during the game: 

“Our run, our overlap and our hands were really good. I thought Darcy Hogg and Heath Ramshaw in the middle were super impressive.

“’Pitto’ gave us some really good use, and obviously having Will Hayes back, he provided some great run and overlap.  

“We’ve got a relatively young team, so we’re working really closely with some of our younger mids especially and our high defenders on how they can get involved in the game more.

“It was a really good game to learn from and I’m sure we will see plenty more improvement from those guys.”

On positives throughout the game:

“’Hoggy’ was really impressive. Will Hayes as well with 35 disposals and 23 handball receives, so obviously he gave us plenty of run and overlap.

“I really liked Harry Lemmey’s game up forward. He provided a really strong target for us: he kicked three goals, had six score involvements and five marks. It’s a game he’s been trying to look to for a while now, so he will keep working on his consistency.

“I could go through the list as there were plenty of players. But probably the overall thought was that we probably just lost too many contests at crucial times in the game, especially in the second half.” 

On the message to the players and the focus for the coming weeks:

“The focus will remain the same: it’s to get to work on our training. It’s the most important thing along with our fundamentals.

“We’ve got a lot of young guys in this team and I think it’s been a bit of a haphazard start to the season: we’ve had two byes to start in five weeks which isn’t ideal to build that consistency.

“We do a lot of our work during the week. And watching vision, education working on our fundamentals.

“Hopefully over the next few weeks we see a transfer of that into games. The result is disappointing, but there was a lot of good stuff against a pretty quality outfit.”