CARLTON VFL Coach Damian Truslove believes there were positives to take from his side’s Round 10 clash with Geelong.
Despite the 50-point loss and a costly third quarter, Truslove was encouraged by the Blues’ ability to compete with one of the competition’s strongest teams for much of the afternoon and praised the group's resilience.
On matching it with the best:
“I thought we took it to them for close to three quarters. Obviously, our third quarter was really disappointing; we couldn't stop their momentum, but for three quarters, we showed we could match one of the better teams.
“They're a powerful team and have a hell of a lot of AFL experience in their midfield, which really hurt us today. I was proud of the boys for the way they fought out that fourth quarter.”
On pleasing signs to start the game:
“We spoke about the way we wanted to set the ground up, and the way we wanted to use the ball, and they were doing that. Our entries going inside 50 need to be a little bit better, to be a bit more powerful going inside 50.
“Overall, we're happy with the way with the moving the ball, the way we were defending, the pressure we're putting on the opposition. But unfortunately, we couldn't maintain it for the whole game.”
On learning to halt momentum:
“I had a good chat to the boys then about when teams get momentum, what's our role to try and shut that down. We spoke about each line, what they could do to do that.
“It's a good learning for our young group to say, well, the opposition's got momentum now, we need to shut the game down for five to eight minutes, and then hopefully change the momentum on the back of that.”
On character shown in the final quarter:
“We outscored them in the last quarter. The boys showed a lot of fight and character, that's two weeks in a row we've won last quarters when we're probably out of the game at three-quarter time.
“We played our way [in the last quarter]: we need to take that into the Essendon game next Sunday, which will be another tough game for us.”
On finishing games the right way:
“It's so important. It shows a lot of character, it shows that the players really care, that they want to fight and they want to win.”
On AFL returnees making their mark:
“It was great to have that experience out there with ‘Saady’ and ‘Lordy’. Zac Williams and Wade Derksen came back into the team. Those guys performed really strongly, and they'll put their hand up for AFL selection next week.”
