MICHAEL Voss is continuing to push his side to improve, but has been happy with the progress they've made in a short period of time.
Here's what he had to say on returning players, development and team selection.
On George Hewett:
"We got to Tuesday and just weren’t happy enough with how [the calf] was progressing so the call was made pretty early that we’ll take another week with that.
"He’s been impressive, George, he really has. The midfield group has been forming a strong relationship with one another and he’s been a critical part of that.
"I think we’ve also seen that guys can step in and fill the void, whether it’s for a game or two. We saw young Jack Carroll come in and have a really impressive performance and he didn’t play a heap of mid time, but he got a look in there and he deserved his spot and he gets another chance."
On Caleb Marchbank:
"He’ll play VFL on the weekend so that’s a really great story. He’s been slowly building his work: he’s got a fair body of work under his belt now, so it's pleasing he’ll play VFL.
"We don’t have a criteria outside of really spending a couple of weeks getting his match fitness up. He hasn’t played a lot of footy in recent times, but we’ll let the fitness and the form really determine what the time frame might be: there’s no rush on our end.
"We haven’t seen him for a while but I’ve been particularly impressed with what I’ve seen through training. He has done a fair bit of training, that’s the thing he does have behind him so he should go into this game feeling pretty confident.
"We just had a little chat out there saying he’s returning and as you can imagine, their response was really positive."
On Scott Burns and Adelaide:
"I don’t expect him running through the wall and giving me the hip and shoulder: at least I’ve got a couple of walls between him and me so I’m not expecting anything physical.
"What I am expecting, clearly they’ve been a very competitive group for the first part of the season and the results have said so. They didn’t get the result they wanted last week but all that says to me is that the group will be determined to provide a response.
"At their best, they’ve been a very strong pressure team. They stand up well, they’ve got a lot of workers, so we’re going to have to be playing really well this week to get the result."
On improving from the end of last season:
"Clearly, we’ve made a heap of progress. If we reflect back to when we first started to where we are now, we had a lot to accomplish.
"We had to get a really strong training program under our belt, the players really had to embrace a really different way that we were going to play.
"There was a fair body of work from then to now and we feel like we’re in the early stages of the development and that we’ve got a long way to go."
On the wing role:
"We think the combination we’ve had the last couple of weeks has been really effective, everyone has taken their turn when going in there. Will [Setterfield] has had periods where he’s played particularly good football as well.
"We think the advantage of the group at the moment is that we have a number of players who can come in and get the job done for us. We’ve had some really strong VFL form from the boys and as a result, they ask the question.
"What we like to think we do really well is acknowledge that form. If the roles present themselves and there are opportunities, they’ll be a chance to play. Lochie and 'Newnesy' have played really well and we’ve got to keep our form going."
On Paddy Dow:
"It's not so much what [Dow] has been working on but the opportunities haven’t been there. We look at our squad mentality and he’s been in some really good form.
"What he’s up against is other players who have been in really good form as well. We’ve been pretty clear on our roles from the start of this: where we see players playing and their value to us.
"Paddy has been fantastic, I can’t fault him. He’s been in some great form and he’s willing to go back and keep working on his game and when he’s ready, he’ll get his turn. He’s got some really clear strengths through the midfield for us so we want to keep promoting that."
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