THE BLUES needed a response, and they just about got one.
Carlton made it seven wins on the spin against Richmond in a two-point triumph, but they were well and truly made to work for it against a spirited Tigers outfit.
Overcoming a three-goal deficit at the first change and then some late Richmond momentum, there was the overriding emotion of relief following the win, with the Blues to return to the MCG next Saturday night against the Hawks.
See what was said post-match.
Florent: “We have a clear mindset that we want to win the spirit battle, that when you watch on TV, you want to play for that team. That’s all the little things that don’t take any talent. It’s celebration, it’s getting around your teammates, it’s lifting them off the ground. We want to be that team that you want to play for.”
Smith: “It was a tough game: credit to Richmond, they brought the heat and hit us hard early. We responded in the second quarter, but a few of those late-game moments, we were pretty disappointed about. We let ourselves down a little bit, but the last 30 seconds was much stronger. We probably let ourselves down a bit… as midfielders, we’ve got to credit our team defence. They were absolutely amazing tonight.”
Cowan: “It’s all process, we’ll go back and watch where we went wrong and what we could get better at. It’s about getting better every day, ‘Frase’ has been big driving that and playing blue-collar footy. We’ll bring everything back to that in the review.”
McGovern: “A win’s a win. If you told us we’d have seven on the trot at Round 9, we thought you’d be joking. It was a bit of a gritty one tonight and it’s probably not what we’ve been capable of in the last 6-7 weeks, but to win these sort of games where it’s right down to the wire when things aren’t going your way, to fight it out was pretty special.”
Fraser: “That’s part of the learning for us, how much did we contribute to that chaos late? There was some method around some free kicks and different things like that where we need to be better. The great part about where we’re at is being able to get an outcome, but being able to look back and go we’ve got to be better going forward in those parts of the game… That was a game we’ll learn a fair bit from.”
Haynes: “We’ll take the four points and we’ll take a lot of learnings from it. We didn’t start the way we wanted… happy for us to play really well in the second quarter. We’ll take the seven wins in a row, for sure. It’s a tight competition and if you’re off slightly, you get punished. It was great for us to regroup to show some character and be ahead at half time.”
Derksen: “Another great learning curve for myself. ‘Youngy’ went down so I had to switch roles, but I’m up for any challenge. I just try and play my role to the best of my ability, I’m really glad to walk away with the four points.”
