AHEAD of Sunday’s clash with the Bombers, David Teague is confident that the 22 selected on will get the job done against the arch-rival.
When asked about balance younger and senior players at selection, the coach was adamant match committee would not be gifting games to younger players.
“I think our fans want us to pick the team that is going to win this weekend and take us forward,” he said.
“We’ve given a lot of games to young guys in the past and sometimes you lose that winning culture so it’s a balancing act.”
“We’re looking at the bigger picture rather than the right now all the time and we want to make these players the best players they can be so when they come back at AFL level, they can play their role and get their job done.”
“We’re going to keep making decisions we think are in the best interest of the football club.”
With skill errors and consistency being a main issue for the Blues, Teague noted that the side will continue working on the errors and playing consistent footy across four quarters.
Teague is under no illusions that his side is not up to scratch, admitting they haven’t been playing how they want to play over the last few weeks.
“We want to win and we expect to go out there and play a brand of football that can win any game,” Teague said.
“In the first six weeks, four of those we haven’t been good enough and we need to continue to get better.”
This Sunday, Jacob Weitering becomes one of our youngest ever players to reach 100 games for our football club.
— Carlton FC (@CarltonFC) April 28, 2021
From the No.1 hype to a stint in the VFL to a John Nicholls Medal, he's reaping the rewards after riding the highs and the lows. This is what he's made of it all.
Teague noted it wasn’t just skill errors that were costing Carlton wins, but their structure and set-up behind the ball needed to be more consistent if they were to stop teams going on extended scoring runs.
“When we do make a skill error, we’re getting hurt too often and often that is off the back of our structure and system behind the ball and our being ready to defend,” he said.
“That transition speed from offence to defence is the area we need to improve on so from a skills point of view, early in the year we were kicking the ball quite well, the numbers stacked up really well but the last few weeks haven’t been as good but it’s a combination of the two.
“We need to be ready to defend, the game is about turnovers and who’s ready to win the ball back the quickest and we need to get better at that.”
