120 MINUTES of football.
Having so far eluded the team so far in 2025, AFL Senior Coach Michael Voss has put the challenge down for a four-quarter performance when Carlton hosts North Melbourne at the MCG.
This is what Voss had to say.
On Charlie Curnow’s availability:
“He’s going pretty good, all indications. He trained pretty much the whole session - I wasn’t sure how much he’d get through, but he got through the lot of it. We expect he’ll play.
“Coming in, we weren’t sure where we’d go - we let him lead us where to go next, and fortunately he was able to complete pretty much the entire session. He might’ve missed five minutes, that’s about all.
“The indication is as long as he pulls up well today, he’s playing, fit and available.”
On Harry McKay’s injury layoff:
“It’s disappointing to lose him, as it is with ‘Walshy’ - they’re clearly very important players to us, we’d love them out there. Unfortunately we haven’t had him out there for a lot of the season due to different reasons, I’d like to think that we can make our way through that and we’ve got guys that can step in and get the job done.
“The advantage of having players in form in the VFL is giving them the exposure to play AFL. We haven’t hesitated when it’s been time to reward those efforts: the next man will come in and the next man will get the job done. It’s got to be as simple as that for us.
“There’s been many examples over the last few years where we’ve been able to overcome what those challenges have looked like. They’re not ideal and we’d love everybody available to go out there and play, every team would love their best players out there week in and week out. But if it requires guys to be able to step up, it becomes more than just one individual and we feel like we can get that done.”
On Marc Pittonet’s AFL recall:
“His form is the reason, it’s always based on form. Particularly his last two or three weeks in the VFL he has stepped up his game.
“With ‘Huddo’ going down, we’ve also got to seek other avenues forward - that’s one of the options. You’ve also got to have the person there waiting and in great form, he deserves his chance.”
On Harry Lemmey’s case for an AFL debut:
“Very close, very close.
“He’s one of those players that has had four or five weeks of consistent output. As I said to ‘Lem’, his job is to keep knocking the door down and put pressure on us to be able to put the magnet on the board. It’s not only him, there’s been a number of our VFL boys that have progressed in their game over the last five or six weeks.
“We’ve seen some new faces in the team, and we’ll hopefully continue to see those over the course of the season.”
On where the team currently sits:
“The ladder never lies. We go out every single week earning the right. We’ve had elements of inconsistency in the way we’ve performed. You would love to be sitting here with a couple of extra wins under our belt, telling a different story on results that could’ve gone our way but didn’t. That’s the demands of the season. We have to make sure we rise to that.
“We had a really good reflection at the bye about that first half of the year, and now we turn our eyes forward. It’s not about what’s happened backwards, it’s about what happens forwards. We’ve taken that approach since the bye, it’s given us the opportunity to reset a few things and put a few things to work.”
On the weekly Tom De Koning question:
“I reckon two years ago, we were sitting in the same situation - then he walked into my office one day and signed the next day.
“On TDK, he’ll make that decision whenever that is in due course. But I look at what he’s providing us, the investment he has in our team and how much he loves his teammates - he’s grown up at this football club. This is his team, and he sees himself as that.
“When we have these conversations, that’s what we talk about - the team, how he’s going to get better and what that looks like in the future. We’re more than happy to have those discussions: all he needs from me is the reinforcement of what he brings to the team, how important he is to us as a player and he’ll continue to do so. That’s what I’ll continue to ask of him.”
On the task ahead:
“We’ve got a job to do on Saturday, and we’re laser-focused in on making sure we play well. We’ve got a system we want to play, we’ve been really proud of some aspects of our game that we’re getting right.
“We’re laying those foundations down, but we’re also really clear on the things we need to be better at - that’s where all our energy has been. We haven’t shifted our focus: it’s the next contest, it’s the next team we play and that’s North Melbourne. That’s what gets our sole attention.”
On North Melbourne:
“Since the last time we’ve played them, they’ve got a fair body of work. Maybe aside from the Collingwood game, they’ve been in every single game. They’ve looked like they’ve had an element of stability, they’ve worked on their identity as a football team, they’ve got some young players they’re getting game time into.
“These ones get decided with 120 minutes of football, and anything short of that puts you at risk.”
