THE CARLTON Reserves recorded their sixth win in their Round 14 clash against Port Melbourne at ETU Stadium.

(PHOTO CREDIT: Tom McLachlan)

Coming into Saturday’s game hungry to bounce back after a tough loss against North, the Blues fought off a relentless Port Melbourne outfit away from home, defeating them by 11 points.

AFL development coach Torin Baker had this to say.

On his thoughts post-game:

“I thought we played four quarters of pretty tough footy tonight.

“The pleasing thing was that our boys were able to hang in there, and I thought we were really good around the contest.

"With a pretty young midfield for us to be able to hang in there like that for the duration, against a really good contested ball side was probably one of the highlights of the evening for us.

“That also included some of our aerial as work for us as well and being really good in the contest.”

What’s working well onfield:

“I think what’s really good is one of the things we’ve been really consistent on is some of our scores from the back half, which has been a bit of a deciding factor. It’s probably proven a bit of the difference scores from the back half, so that’s been really good.

“As we said, we’ve been getting stronger around the ball and that’s given us a really good chance to be really competitive and be in a lot of games.”

On bouncing back following close losses:

“I think last week we all thought we played pretty well, we just didn’t take all of our opportunities late, which can happen from week to week.

“We obviously did that tonight and it's a good learning. It’s part of the game and you’ve got to be efficient when you’re in your front half and when you're in front of goal, you’ve to take your moments.

“To be able to take our moments like we did was another step for our young group.”

On the standout performers in the forward line:

“I thought Frankie Evans had a really strong game really strong four-quarter game. All our smalls were really damaging tonight and obviously Ash [Ashton Moir] had a couple of really excellent moments marking and going back to convert two difficult opportunities was great. His progress over the last month has been really exciting.”

On the focus of the group:

“What we need to continue to focus on is - especially when we talk to the young group - it’s about how we prepare each week to be really consistent footballers.

“So, the next one for us is making sure we are ready for next week. We’ve got Collingwood who have been going well in the VFL, so that’s a really good challenge for our players, and we don’t need to look any further ahead than that.”