CARLTON'S barnstorming 61-point win over the Sydney Swans snapped a 12-game losing streak against the Sydneysiders, but coach Brett Ratten was more pleased with his young side's ability to stand up to the pressure exerted by the hardened Swans' unit.

"We gave up about 700 games [of experience] today and roughly two and a half years of age per player on the ground," Ratten said.

"To beat a mature team that's been in the finals for so long and get the monkey off our back with how long it's been since we've beaten them – I just think it was really pleasing to get that contribution across the board from a young team."

The final score line looked highly improbable early in the third quarter when alarm bells were ringing as the Blues stared down a 15-point deficit after a first half largely controlled by the Swans, with  210 possessions to the Blues' 131.  

Brendan Fevola finished with five goals, but kicked just one of those in the first half when his attempts to find open space were frustrated by a crowded forward 50.

"There were warning signs that we just had to work harder and get on our bikes a bit better," Ratten said.

"I think we did that right across the board. We turned it around and we pretty much did a 180 in all aspects of the game and it all started with just getting our hands on the ball.

"I thought our pressure to win the ball back was fairly good [in the first half], but I think there were some soft goals. I think the momentum changed when we manned up that spare [defender], or tried to, and they just kept swinging numbers back.

"They were going to play every man they had down there and leave the [front half] open for them – until we could get that balance right [it was a struggle]."

After some sloppy skills were displayed in the club's last two wins against Fremantle and Richmond, Ratten was particularly pleased with his players' disposal by foot which drove the nine goals to nil final term.

"We're starting to get back to about a month ago when we were really kicking the ball really well," he said.

"After the last two weeks you could really see the improvement through the week at training and we made the transition to game day. As the game opened up I thought our skills really improved.

"That was in the kicking aspect of the game, but maybe we've still got a fair bit of work to do to clean up our game overall. There were some positive signs I think."

The coach's decision to move away from his policy of playing up a bad record against a side certainly paid dividends against the Swans, and Ratten committed to continue the more inward-focused approach as an elusive finals berth edges closer.

"We changed the view of looking at the opposition and what they've done to us to what we can actually do for ourselves and that's achieved something that's been a fair amount of time coming," he said.

"As a club we put it down that we'd like to play finals football. That's our ambition because we haven't played for so long, but as a team we sort of got caught up looking at that and saying 'we need to do this to make finals'.

"Probably around the mid-season break mark we reduced all that talk and said 'let's just concentrate on beating what we did last year' and that was 10 wins. We still haven't accomplished that and that's the challenge for the group."