IT WASN'T the prettiest win he's been involved with, but Carlton coach Brett Ratten was delighted with his patched-up team's ability to run over the top of the Western Bulldogs to keep its season alive on Saturday night.

Injuries and suspension had forced Ratten to spend the week trying to plug holes in his already depleted side and the beleaguered coach was looking down the barrel with the Blues 25 points down late in a first half in which they had been largely outplayed.

But his team that included three debutants and a host of previously out-of-favour veterans dug deep to show him something in the second half that will give him reason to look upon the rest of the season with some hope.

"Sometimes when it's not going quite right with your list or you get some injuries you get to find out about a few players," Ratten said after the gritty 18-point win.

"Sometimes through adversity you find opportunities and people keep their careers going or even elevate their position at the football club because of what they did.

"They're things that come out of the game that make you go, 'Ok we've got some kids on our list who can really play' and we'll put a lot more time into them.

"At the end of the day we came here to win four points and that's what we did. Those kids playing [tonight], they'll be better next week, they'll learn from the experience and they'll come out of it a lot better."

First-gamers Frazer Dale, who came in for late withdrawal Mitch Robinson, Levi Casboult and Tom Bell came into the side along with Jordan Russell, Paul Bower and Bret Thornton after the Blues lost Chris Judd, Andrew Walker, Matthew Kreuzer, Lachie Henderson and Kane Lucas from the line-up thumped by North Melbourne last week.

He was pleased with the contribution of all the inclusions, but also made special mention of the efforts of veterans Marc Murphy, Brock McLean, Michael Jamison and Heath Scotland as well as former Tiger Andrew Collins.

Carlton had dominated the headlines for all the wrong reasons in the days following Judd's chicken wing tackle on Leigh Adams and the subsequent tribunal hearing and suspension, but Ratten said it would be wrong to assume he and his team had dealt with any great hardship as it prepared for the clash against the Dogs.

"There wasn't really pressure on us this week," he said.

"There was a lot of focus on Chris with the tribunal appearance and all that, but there wasn't pressure on the coaching staff or the players.

"It was about opportunity. If Chris was rubbed out someone else has to take his place and what a great opportunity it was for Marc Murphy to captain this football club."

Ruckman Rob Warnock will return next week and Jarrad Waite will play in the VFL, but Carlton's lengthy injury list will require Ratten to continue to plug gaps for a while yet.
 
"We can't tell you what personnel we're going to get back," he said.

"We're just worrying about what we can do with the personnel that we have. We'll keep playing the kids. I was really proud of the way they played, but I was really pleased with the leaders of our footy club.

"We don't have to reinvent the wheel - we've just got to play strong hard football and be hard to play against.

"When the opposition came off they should know that we've been hard to play against … I think you earn respect from doing that and we need to just keep chipping away regardless of who pulls on the navy blue guernsey."