AS THE Blues head into the second half of the season, midfielder Adam Cerra admits there is work to do on some areas of their game.
While still playing to their strengths, the group are shifting their focus from defence to offence, aiming to make a surge towards the end of the season.
Here's what he had to say.
On participating in the Cultural Heritage Series:
"Really special. When you have a club like Carlton and the make-up and the history and the different cultures that have made this Club, to be part of this game is really special."
On Harry McKay's injury:
"The boys have [got around him]. It’s been a tough couple of weeks for 'H', but going in for surgery and we know the ultimate professional he is, he’ll put his head down and do his best to get back and impact this season.
"As everyone who goes through injury, we put our arms around them and fully support them.
"It’s a hard game to be a part of, on and off the field, we wrap our arms around everyone who goes through rough times.
"It’s been a tough year, so it’s extra important that we get around him and support him, which this club is so great at. We’re a close group and a tight-knit Club, so I’m sure he’ll get heaps of support."
On filling Harry's spot:
"We’ve seen in the last couple of weeks some young players coming in and taking opportunities. Hudson O’Keeffe over the last couple of weeks, Harry Lemmey has been playing some good footy in the VFL.
"We’re not purely relying on tall forwards down there, we have our smalls getting to work: Lachie Fogarty, Zac Williams, since he’s come back from injury.
"For us, it’s next man up, we’ve got many capable players, but we’re not relying on one or two forwards, we have multiple avenues of scoring, and that’s how we want to play."
On Nic Newman's injury update:
"Pleasantly surprised. We definitely missed him out there. In the last few years since I’ve been here, he’s played some great footy and been a real leader for us.
"To hear that, I think I was surprised the other day, I turned around and he was pretty much doing match sim with us, fully training. We’re super excited for him to finish off his rehab and potentially play some footy this year."
On finals aspirations:
"We don’t look too far ahead. Like every Club, we want to be there in September, trying to win this competition, we’re not shying away from that.
"We’ve been disappointed with the first half of our season but the focus is right now is finishing off this year really strong and really put ourselves in a strong position to hopefully play September footy.
"For us, it’s keeping our focus week to week, as cliche as that sounds. We’ve got to take it game by game, knotch up these wins and we’ll see where we finish."
On facing North Melbourne:
"It’s exciting. North, it’s probably their strongest area of their team, the midfield, so we know our hands are always full against them and those guys are in great form.
"Our midfield is one of our strengths as well, so it’s always exciting to have tests like that."
On shifting the focus to offence:
"We’ve probably gone to the next level with the education of our ball movement, so many areas of our game are in really good stead, it’s just we weren’t executing and getting scores from it.
"Over that bye, we had some really good training sessions and mostly ball movement focused, but we’re not disregarding all the areas of the game that are going really well.
"Still focusing on those, we know that’s what getting us in games and keeping us in games, it’s just that finishing touch that we’re continuing to train and educate week by week."
"I wouldn’t say it’s adding another component; we’ve been training our ball movement all preseason, and it hasn’t changed how we want to play.
"It’s more changing our focus, where we were keeping teams to low scores and invested a lot of energy into our defence, where we’ve got to score the other way as well to win some of these games.
"The education isn’t new, it’s probably just highlighting it again, stuff we’ve trained before, it’s bringing the focus back onto it."
On finishing plays:
"For us, it’s probably just our execution, the way we finish our play, playing with that bit of freedom, but also the education of what we want the front of the ball to look like and what we want our entries to look like.
"It’s not just on our forwards, mids or backs, it’s on everyone. We’re continuing to work on that cohesion going forward, and hopefully we’ll see some high scores, but most importantly, we’ll keep teams to really low scores, which is one of our big aims. We’re not going to disregard that either."
On injuries as a whole:
"Injury is a part of the game, I’ve experienced that first-hand. Every team has them, unfortunately, but for us, we believe that the 22 we put out there, we have full trust in them, and they have the ability to get the job done. It’s a week as usual for us."
On Tom De Koning:
"From our perspective, he’s shown up every game, he’s invested in his training and teammates and shows no signs of wavering.
"We’re really happy with how he’s performing this year, he’s an ultimate competitor, and he has a decision to make, but I’m sure that’ll happen in due time. I’m loving the teammate he’s been so far."
