INJURED Carlton skipper Sam Docherty shared in the disappointment of the playing group in the wake of the loss to GWS on Sunday.

The young Blues outfit struggled against the top of the table opposition, unable to find the competitive form more characteristic of weeks gone by. 

Watching on from the sidelines, Docherty reflected on the Blues performance on RSN Breakfast Club on Monday morning.

“It was obviously a very disappointing result for us as a footy club, so we were licking our wounds a bit on the plane home last night,” said Docherty.

“We thought we’d learnt the lesson against the Kangaroos a couple of weeks ago and produced a better work ethic and brutality in our game last week.” 

“It crept up on as again on the weekend, which is really disappointing for us as a footy club.”

The Blues were criticised for their mental preparation following their Round 7 defeat to North Melbourne, but showed composure against the top-four Pies the following week.

“We thought we learned from the North game and we tried to change a few things that we did that week to make sure we were right mentally,” he said.

“We came out in the first two minutes and we obviously got challenged pretty quickly and we didn’t cope with that challenge.”

Docherty is one of many Blues on-field leaders experiencing stints on the sidelines with injury, with veteran Kade Simpson also missing from the Blues backline.

Despite the lack of experience across the board, the co-captain is not willing to use the Blues’ young list and perceived lack of on-field leadership as an excuse for poor performance. 

“I don’t really want to give us an out as a footy club because even if you had leadership, I don’t think it would have changed much on the day to be honest,” he said.

“Little bits of momentum maybe if we had more leaders out there would’ve helped.” 

Despite the weekend’s performance, Docherty implored Carlton supporters to stick with the developing playing group adamant that Sunday’s performance was an anomaly in a season where the Blues have showed a marked improvement.

“I think the message is pretty clear, yesterday was unacceptable by us as a footy club and us as players. What we produced was not good enough,” he said. 

“Yesterday was not the step forward that we wanted but we’ve got to ask hard questions and we’ll do that internally this week and hopefully we’ll get a response next week.”