MICHAEL Voss once again applauded his team's resilience against a tough opponent in Collingwood. 

While Voss admitted Collingwood was a strong opponent that deserved to win, he also pointed out that his side has built an impressive ability to fight out games time and time again. 

Here's what he had to say on the game. 

On the game as a whole: 

"We probably didn’t deserve it. We’d take it if it was half a metre the other way: our guys fought out a game really hard.

"If you took a snapshot across the game though, Collingwood were the deserved winners.

"There’s a resilience emerging but there are still some things we clearly need to go to work on and improve. Collingwood had lots of shots and missed a lot which gave us a chance in the end but it would’ve been nice to steal it right at the end." 

On Jacob Weitering:

"He’ll go see the surgeon this week and see if he needs surgery. If it ventures into that space, we’re talking a longer term injury. There’s some challenges in that, I said to the group ‘you get thrown spanners, every team does get’s challenged at different times.’

"Through those periods, which is what we’ve done, we’ve been able to find a way and that’s what the challenge is ahead of us. We go to the break 8-3, increasing our own expectations on what our hopes are this season and we’ve been able to do that by manoeuvring through a few things and being able to manage some injuries and time on ground for players.

"We’ve had a couple of spanners thrown at us but we’ll keep getting through it."

On losing key players in big games: 

"I don’t feel unlucky at all. I think part of what you get is you have to be able to adapt and you have to show resilience in the game. It’s a long season, a very long season and we’ve spoken a lot about being consistent and reliable and that doesn’t rely on personnel.

"There’s an expectation of performance we’ve built with this group and when you step in as next man, you’ve got to get a job done.

"Clearly, we’d like some more players back but if this is what we’ve got, then we’ve got to get on with it."

On ball movement: 

"It wasn’t just down [the defensive] end, it was down the other end as well. The contested marking part of the game, we weren’t able to control the air, whereas they were able to.

"I feel like at times, the way we moved the ball a bit fuelled their game and that got their transition game going and got ourselves on the back foot a number of times.

"The inside 50s at our end, we weren’t able to hold it in there as well as what we have in the past. We’ve been able to do a great job and even in the last quarter, we did a great job, but it was too fluctuating throughout the night and Collingwood was able to deny us any marks inside 50 or any shots on goal which is a credit to them." 

On Charlie Curnow: 

"It was pretty well fought out in terms of the contest. When Charlie made the most of his opportunities, he was able to get his battle as he needed but there were a few others factors that influenced the game a bit: their backs were able to just mark it a few more times than we wanted. 

"He’s been battling there and the thing I love about him, the least of his concerns is hitting the scoreboard. It’s been about being a great teammate, he’s brought others into the game. As a collective, we weren’t able to get that job done tonight."

On the crowd: 

"That’s been the exciting part of the first half of the year: we’ve felt that slow momentum build. We’ve felt that energy from the outside and we’ll keep embracing it.

"I think at the start of the year when you get to the turn and you just look at pure results, sitting at 8-3 with some of the exposure we’ve had and the game style we’ve been able to get into the guys early – it’s been really impressive.

"Their ability to be able to take on what we’ve asked them to do and the level of improvement they’ve had in such a short period of time has been sensational from my point of view, so their commitment I cannot fault.

"We also know we’ve got plenty of work to go and some of it is just that constant reinforcement about what we want and regardless of scoreboard, pressure or the crowd, being able to do the same things, we haven’t nailed that yet."

On the rivalry:

"I hope over time this rivalry can continue to build – whether that is mate v mate or club v club, we want to see more crowds like that, be able to play in games like that. They’re big games in the home and away season and you look forward to these fixtures.

"We don’t want to play it down, we want to build it up and we want to play a role in that."