CARLTON'S  VFL affiliate the Northern Bullants have solidified their position in the top eight of the competition with a 10-point win over Geelong on Saturday at NAB Oval.

It was the Bullants' 10th win for the season and moves them to seventh on the ladder, two games clear of  ninth-placed Sandringham.

Assistant coach Matthew Lappin shares his thoughts on the match and how some of the Carlton-listed players performed.

We had a really good performance from a whole range of players this week. Geelong had a few guys pull out the morning of the game, which helped us after their senior side had lost a few players.

We had a good team effort from a lot of players, we had a lot of goal-kickers and we played pretty well considering it was such a crunch game for us.

Ryan Jackson was good on the weekend, winning plenty of the ball. Luke Blackwell had plenty of it too, and Adam Hartlett was a really good focal point up forward for us.

It's great that we've sealed up a spot in the eight. It's what we play for, and it will be good to get a crack at a few games. We've got that opportunity now, and hopefully we'll be able to get a win or two up in September.

A lot of the boys haven't been involved in finals before. We play every week so we can aim towards getting enough games to be involved, and we've done that.

Our young blokes will enjoy playing in a game that has a little bit more pressure in it, I would say.

Carlton has also had a really good year with 10 wins, and I suppose it's just another part of the footy club that's on the improve. It just shows that the guys we've had playing with us, both the younger and older guys, have been playing good, winning football.

We've still got to get through Port Melbourne this week before the finals happen, but we can't go out of the eight and we can't go any higher than seventh, so not much can happen ladder wise now.

Port is a really good side and they smashed us first time around, so hopefully we'll be able to put in a good showing.

The form of the side has been good but any time we've gotten confident before, we've ended up getting our bums kicked.

Every time we think we're going all right, we seem to get beaten. We're aware of that so we'll try to keep the boys level headed, because you definitely can't go getting ahead of yourself before a game against Port Melbourne. They beat us by 60 or 70 points last time.

We're massive underdogs so if we go into this game over-confident, we're kidding ourselves.

I don't think it's an issue with the boys looking a week ahead to the finals. Each individual in our side will have things they're trying to work on, as individual players and as team members, so I don't think anyone will be doing that.

It's just a case of getting this game played and seeing if we can get a win, and when that's done we'll move onto the finals.

Cain Ackland has another week to go before we get him back from injury but we should have him in for finals. I don't think there's many more to come back after him.

NORTHERN BULLANTS   6.2  11.5  15.10  16.16 (112)
GEELONG    4.2  6.6  9.7  13.14 (92)

GOALS
Northern Bullants: D. Boundy 3, M. Lappin 2, R. Jackson 2, A. Gianfagna 2, A. Hartlett 2, P. Colbert 2, D. Teague, J. Edwards, D. Pfeiffer
Geelong: T. Hawkins 6, K. Carey 2, J. Byrne 2, D. McKenna 2, N. Djerrkura

BEST
Northern Bullants: A. Hartlett, R. Jackson, L. Blackwell, R. Hadley, D. Boundy, J. Vansittart
Geelong: T. Hawkins, J. Davenport, B. Moles, J. Laidler, J. Byrne, K. Carey