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ADAM Bentick put in arguably his best performance of the season in Carlton’s win over Fremantle on Saturday and the Blues onballer is delighted to be making a contribution after struggling with a groin complaint early in the season.

“I’ve just been trying to find my feet for the last couple of weeks,” Bentick said after his 31-possession game.

“It was good with Shaun Hampson and Matty Kruezer in the ruck, they were able to compete with Aaron Sandilands and give us a chance on the ground so it was good from a midfielder’s point of view.”

Bentick had the unenviable task of running with Freo power forward Matthew Pavlich when he pushed up into the midfield and acquitted himself well.

“He’s a big man to shift,” he said with a wry grin.

“He got a couple of centre clearances and he kicked one from inside the square so he goes in there and has a real impact for them. I tried to read Sandilands’ hitouts as well as I could and outbody him and get in front at the last minute.”

Despite trailing by as much as 10 points late in the match, Bentick said the Dockers’ well-documented issues with running out games had given the team plenty of confidence.

“We knew Fremantle were the worst fourth quarter team in the AFL, so we knew if we kept persisting, we’d get over the line and it was a great effort by the boys to get over in the last quarter,” he said.

“We said throughout the week that if we worked them over throughout the first three quarters, we could overrun them in the last quarter.

“We knew as a group that they had the worst last quarters in the AFL so we knew that going into the last quarter and we knew if we could keep working and keep persisting hopefully they would fall over.

“They missed a couple of shots there in the last quarter and we were able to kick a few so that was probably the difference in the end.”