THE NEED for advancement.

On the back of the bye and heading into a clash with the arch rival, AFL Senior Coach Michael Voss said his Carlton side had 'no excuses' heading into another King's Birthday Eve clash with over 80,000 people expected to be in attendance.

Here's what he had to say.

On taking stock at the midway point:

“There’s parts of our game we’d like to see progression in. Anytime you get to the bye, it gives you the chance to take a breath and evaluate what has gone well, what are some of the things where we clearly need to get better, how the personnel are going, what sort of form they’re in and what the small things are to tinker with.

“You can get to this stage of the season and overhaul things - if anything, it’s about repetition, reinforcement and looking forward to the Essendon game on Sunday. It’s a pretty big clash.”

On what the team is going after:

“One of the things we can hang our hat on is there’s a really clear style of football we want to be able to play. It’s built on the back of what we want to value: there are the fundamentals of the game, there are the hard parts of the game and then we also know we’ve got the fun parts of the game, which is when the ball is in your hands and being able to finish our work.

“There’s a real clarity on what we’re trying to achieve, and everyone’s role within that.”

On Jack Silvagni and Zac Williams:

“Pretty good. They have to get through training, that’s the ultimate test in any week - but we expect them to play.”

On George Hewett re-signing for an extra two seasons:

“There’s not a person that would stand up here and say they don’t love George Hewett. He does the simple things really well, he embraces the contest part of the game and he loves doing a role for the team. There’s a real reliability in the way he performs.

“He’s been challenged on a few fronts over the last couple of years to look at what he adds to us, he’s been able to do that for us. He’s such a great teammate and he has earned that contract extension.”

On talk around Jack Silvagni’s contract:

“Obviously hoping something eventuates there, like a few others! We don’t tend to get into too much dialogue over those sorts of things, they figure themselves out.

“What’s more pleasing for Jack is he’s found his niche. For a long period of time he’s been trying to find that role that he can say is his own: we took an educated view on it to see if we could get something different down back. His personality type suits defence - they’re a bit more different down there!

“He loves to be on the last line and put it all on the line. That back six or seven have delivered some real mateship and reliability around one another: we want to keep reinforcing that.”

On talk around Sam Walsh’s future:

“There’s a bit of speculation about our boys in the last week or so - I nearly fell off my day bed in Fiji when I read some of it. It’s difficult to answer a hypothetical question: these boys know how valuable they are to us as people and as players.

“We tend to deal with what’s real - I’ll leave it at that.”

On the rivalry with Essendon:

“One of the unique things we get, being one of those clubs that has those rivalries with Collingwood and with Essendon and with Richmond. When you turn up, you expect 80,000 to be there. Big supporter bases, the rivalry is real - we don’t like each other.

“Hopefully you come out and compete and it’s that more combative style of football that you’re after. We’ve had our rest: there’s no excuses for us. We go out there, put our best foot forward and kick off the second half of the year. We do that against an arch rival.”

On how Essendon will match up:

“There’s an element of unpredictability, but we’ve seen enough of them over the course of the year with the style of football they’re trying to play with. The aerial threats are a bit different, but looking at them against Brisbane last week, they managed that okay.

“They were able to finish off the game really strongly, I’m sure they’ll get confidence out of that. There are a couple of things to think about, not just what their aerial threats are.”

On limiting the likes of Zach Merrett and Nic Martin:

“They’ve had a couple of other guys that have stood up. They’ve added to their depth. You have to balance it with how much it disrupts other areas of your game, clearly we’d love to minimise their impact.

“We’ve got to have attention on that - if we’re looking for advancement, it’s an area we haven’t got right in the last few weeks. We need to put some attention towards it for sure.”

On greater efficiency going forward:

“We’ve been quite happy about the opportunities we’ve been able to generate, we’d like to finish our work a bit more and get more reward.

“The refinement is around a number of things, but having that presence forward of the ball and having the impact in the air, it not only affects your aerial contest, but it affects where the smalls go and their presence on their floor. We’ve gone to work on that to see how we maximise that a bit more: we’re looking for two or three extra times, not 10 or 15.”

On Graham Wright’s influence:

“’Wrighty’ first coming in has been about his relationships, there hasn’t been a department he hasn’t spent time in. One of those is clearly communicating: we’re fortunate he’s been able to get around to most areas and spend some time within it when needed, plus being able to bounce off that experience has been extremely helpful.

“As fortunate as we are with Brian Cook and Graeme Wright, I find it strange that we can find a negative in that in any way. We’ve got two seasoned leaders who are extremely experienced at what they do. The transition has been fantastic from what I’ve seen - I don’t see a negative in that.”