Carlton coach Mick Malthouse says his Blues are in for a tough test against the Tigers in Round 2, because he expects “Richmond will be smarting after last year”.

Malthouse will be hoping his team can recapture the form that saw them triumph in last year’s Elimination Final. Right now though, it appears there’s much work to do.

After a terrific start against Port Adelaide on Sunday night, Carlton was patchy in the second and third quarters, before fading in the final term.

Malthouse puts the result down to a lack of match conditioning.

“There’s going to be a question as there always is from the media: are we fit? We are fit – there’s no question about our fitness,” Malthouise told CFC TV.

“It’s just that we’ve had a lot of players who had an interrupted pre-Christmas, because of post-season operations.

“We need that hardness – and they will only get that through match conditioning.

“We intend to keep playing players who need that grounding, so that we can get the hardness up as quick as we possibly can … it really only comes about by being on the ground.”

Malthouse praised new recruits Dale Thomas and Andrejs Everitt, while ruckman Rob Warnock, tagger Ed Curnow, and defenders Michael Jamison and Kade Simpson also impressed.

The senior coach says the challenge now for the Blues is to maintain the pressure they applied in the first quarter against Port – and they have a 10-day break to nut-out how to do just that.