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CARLTON coach Brett Ratten has questioned the NAB Challenge schedule after his side was confirmed for a journey to Bunbury, Western Australia for its last match of the pre-season.
The loser of Saturday night's semi-final was slated to meet Fremantle at the regional ground and an under-strength Carlton became that opponent when it lost to Geelong by 17 points.
Ratten shared his concerns over the timing and suitability of the venue after the match.
"It's an interesting concept from the AFL. That's probably the hardest road trip of the NAB Challenge," Ratten said.
"We play the earliest game [of the premiership season] and we've got to go to Bunbury and do a final rehearsal.
"It's quite interesting that we can't do a full dress rehearsal at an AFL ground and make sure our IT (information technology) is up to speed and all our communication and everything like that.
"I don't think Bunbury and Subiaco would have the same facilities. Probably the timing of that is pretty interesting for us."
Carlton meets Richmond in the highly-anticipated premiership season opener on Thursday, March 26.
Ratten said the possibility of playing in Bunbury next weekend had no impact on the selection of his side and maintained star players Chris Judd, Brendan Fevola and Marc Murphy were always scheduled to rest in the third week of the competition.
Ratten was behind the concept to take the game to the country, but felt such excursions should be taken earlier in the competition and not the final week when teams have one last hit-out.
"Most teams in the final week pretty much do a full dress rehearsal and try and get [all their] players back," he said.
"For us we play on the Thursday so it's not like we can even use the following Saturday [after the NAB Challenge match] to tinker because you don't want to be putting players through practice matches knowing that you have to play on Thursday night.
"So our preparation is probably a bit different to Richmond who are on the same schedule as us."
On Friday, the Tigers will play the Brisbane Lions at Gold Coast Stadium, which regularly hosts AFL games.
