Returning Carlton defender Nic Newman spoke post-match to 3AW, after a 10-point loss to North Melbourne. Here's what he had to say:
On his comeback to AFL football:
"Yeah, it's hard to sort of appreciate that at the moment. No doubt tomorrow with some sleep and time with the little one, I'll probably reflect and have some more appreciation on how good it was to be back. I loved being back on the footy field after a year and a half off. It's a little bit hard to appreciate that right now."
On Carlton's second halves:
"I felt like today was a little bit different. We played some good footy in the second half, I know last week we went away from our game style and how we want to play for most of the second half. Whereas, I thought today that third quarter we played some good footy and even late we had some opportunities. I know it feels like it's a similar story, but without watching it back I do feel like there were some positives in the second halves this week. We'll just have to get to work, clearly we had some opportunities and we played some good footy in the third, but there were some patches in the fourth that we will definitely review and look at. We've just got to go to work and get better at it."
"We probably kicked it long too much, but credit to [North Melbourne] they defended the ground pretty well. We've got to keep looking at ways to move the ball in the last quarter when we're tired and the game is on the line. But to [North Melbourne's] credit, they defended very well in the last quarter and forced us to kick down the line. It's hard right now to sit back and think too much about ex's and oh's and game styles. I'm pretty disappointed right now, so we'll look at in the week."
On Michael Voss' post-game address:
"He spoke just after the game, he's an incredible leader and fronts up like good leaders do. As I said there's a strong air of disappointment and frustration but what I said before, we played some good footy in the second half. [North Melbourne] is a quality outfit, they've got some good talented and their mids got going. As I said, Vossy was pretty calm and measured about the game, it was just some moments late - more around some moments we didn't own."
On the last quarter:
"You can feel it when a team's got a bit of momentum, they've sort of got you pinned in the back half. One of the hardest things in footy is to generate ball movement and get it out of your back half, they did a good job defending. At time you've just got to go down the line and win some contests and we didn't do that. We weren't able to get the ball out of bounds and weren't able to hold the ball in and get a repeat stoppage.
We let the ball bobble out, so it's hard when you feel like you're defending multiple entries, and using a fair few tickets on defence and they urge you going the other way. We'll go to work on some of those moments and contest, and potentially being able to get the ball out of bounds. It's a bit raw right now, and it's pretty hard to take in the way the game went."
