IT WASN'T the way they'd liked to have won, but Carlton got the job done over West Coast on Sunday evening. 

With Hudson O'Keeffe and Charlie Curnow missing portions of the match, Senior Coach Michael Voss was left to rearrange the forward line and secondary ruck position after commanding a dominant lead in the first half. 

The Blues went on to deliver a 34-point victory in wet conditions on the road. 

Here's what Voss had to say.

On starting the game strong: 

"Any time you play away, the start is important. Losing Walshy later in the week dampened the team a little bit coming in, but we were still really confident in what we could do.

"We do build our game off the right things: the effort that we bring, the energy we put into our contest and the pressure we want to put on the game.

"That’s what you need every game that you play so we’ll keep challenging the players to play in that manner for the entirety of the game but when you come to an away venue, it’s pretty important that you don’t get the crowd involved and you don’t get a young team feeling too good about themselves at the start of the game."

On different phases within the game: 

"Most of the things we talk about aren’t much about the scoreboard, it’s about how we want to play and the standards we want to play to.

"We’ll continue to reinforce what that actually looks like for us, and the great thing is that we’ve got a really clear picture of what that actually looks like – the method of football we want to play in all three phases is really clear for us.

"Our ability to sustain that over the course of four quarters shouldn’t be determined on what the scoreboard is actually doing to us, it should be about what mode do we need to play? What has the opposition adjusted and what do we need to correct in our play to get back to where we need to?

"You’re not going to get your own way for 120 minutes, but what we can do is continue to be really clear on the way we play, bring the intensity we need and be a great teammate."

On the fast handball game in the first term: 

"We did break them open pretty well. To West Coast’s credit over the last month, I think what is becoming clear is a clear identity in the way we want to play and the real threat for us is their ball movement and maybe the weather sort of played a bit of a role in that.

"I felt like that was a key thing for us, we put a lot of energy into that – they’ve been generally able to get a lot of ball speed and they weren’t able to in the first half. I don’t think they got a lot of ball speed across the whole night to be honest.

"There’s a fair bit of work in our team system to make that happen, so with that came some opportunities the other way and fortunately, we were able to take those opportunities to control field position."

On the injuries at half time: 

"There was a bit to deal with at half time. Our talls were our major issue in not having them, so we were working out who was going to be second ruck and if we were going to play a small forward line, were we going to shift anyone from the front half to the back half.

"There was a fair bit to think about, but that’s an unusual spanner that we got thrown. We probably didn’t adapt as well as we’d like, but we feel like our intensity dropped a little too much and strayed from what set us up in a really good position in the first half."

On Charlie Curnow and Hudson O'Keeffe:

"Calf tightness, but we got to the point where we weren’t going to take any risk with it. Charlie mentioned going back out there, but ultimately, we made the decision that it was a risk not worth taking."

"'Huddo' has hurt his hamstring so that was a little bit tight and in the third quarter he hurt it again, so we’ll get that scanned and find out." 

On a drop in intensity after half time: 

"We weren’t able to play at the same intensity. After half time, it’s not a fatigue thing, it’s are we still valuing the right things? Does the scoreboard actually matter?

"We’ll dig into that but what we’ll also do is make sure that we’ll put up in lights exactly what we want to play like and what the behaviours are that we need to support us.

"Our challenge is how will we sustain that? Because we’re not right now, so we need to be able to sustain that for longer than what we are, but it’s not because the players won’t have a really clear picture of what works. We’ve got that clear picture, but obviously we’re not playing it for long enough."

On changing the trend in future games: 

"There’s some familiarity to it, a familiar tale. I think the washup will be that we’ll look at that and look at it over the course of the next couple of days.

"We’ll continue to have those conversations, not like they haven’t been had, we’ve had a few of them. I guess the challenge will be to look at the positivity of the way we play and what puts us in those positions and that’s what we’ll tend to focus on.

"It doesn’t mean we accept it all, we’ll challenge where we need to challenge, but when you’re coming to an away venue, you’re playing against an opposition that’s been in pretty good form for the first half of the year - had a very dominant first half - and we were able to play out the game with some challenges and not exactly the way we want to finish out the game, but we get the result and that’s an important four points."

On Harry McKay's knee: 

"We have to explore that, it’s too early for me to say. We need to investigate it further and seeing the specialist is one of those steps we’ll make decisions based off the back of that sometime this week.

"We were hopeful it would turn a corner, but it hasn’t, so we’ll have to investigate some more and take it from that.

"He’s holding up okay, but whenever a player gets injured, it’s not nice, they want to play, same with 'Walshy', he’ll be missed, but what we have to continue to do is we have a job to do and we look forward to the next six days and we go into process mode, that’s what we do.

"We’ve shown that the next man in can come in and play a role for us and we’ve been able to do that pretty well over the last couple of weeks.

"Coming out of the bye, we had a couple of good wins so the boys should be feeling pretty good about themselves about how we’ve handled ourselves post-bye."

On the changing personnel in the forward line: 

"A couple of weeks ago, we needed to change our forward mix. We probably knew there was going to be some parts that didn’t go 100 per cent right for 120 minutes, but Cincotta has come into that, Williams come back, had an impact for us, McGovern has gone from back to now playing in the forward line, Hudson came in as his debut two weeks ago.

"There’s been a fair bit of change in that particular part of the game, so to have that level of continuity is the priority for us now, to get the continuity so when under pressure, we do the same things."

On playing a tall v a small forward line: 

"I’d like a couple more talls down there, just because they do draw the ball. We’ve also shown in the past that if we need to take that as a strategy, then we can do it.

"It probably does put a load on a couple of different people to go that way but in the short term, we’ll assess some players in great form in the VFL right now, so they’re presenting in really good form right now.

"We’ll find out who comes in to fill the void on that, but we do need that presence forward of the ball, if nothing else, we need a second ruck and we have to have a bit more thought about where that comes from."

On the midfield opportunities that younger players get: 

"Continued exposure for some of our guys, with a guy like Jaxon Binns who’s come in to play a few games.

"Cooper Lord, who has been largely playing out of position - such is a young man with his attitude - he’s happy to be out there and play any role he gets given, the detail he’s put into his game and the adjustment he’s been able to make has been beyond his years.

"The fact that Sam has come out has given us the opportunity to get some time for him to play some midfield, so the investment into our young players will continue and that’s where their opportunity lies now so it’s theirs to make the most of it."