MICHAEL Voss wasn't expecting his team's performance last night, but applauded how they kept up the fight in tough conditions. 

In a less than desirable result for the Blues, Voss lauded their next-man-up mentality and the ability to play out games.

Here's what he had to say post game:

On the game as a whole:

"The game was set up really early. We certainly overused the ball early. It’s not how we wanted to come into the game, especially with the conditions.

"When you factor in the opposition and the way that they’re able to play, we just fuelled their game too much.

"What I wasn’t expecting was their dominance around the ball early in the game, so while we did well to try and fight our way out of those positions at times, sometimes it’s just a weight of numbers and that proved exceptionally challenging to move the ball from one end to the other.

"That's the way I see it: 76 inside 50s, that’s pretty big. We certainly weren’t expecting that sort of number. We fought our way back and that's a positive absolutely: we kept fighting until the end and never give in.

"But at the start of the game, we couldn’t quite execute the way we wanted to."

On the fightback: 

"Coming into the game, we certainly weren’t anticipating that we'd be losing that much territory. We felt like we'd more be managing their speed out of the back half than the amount of the inside 50s they had.

"We just weren’t able to get enough looks. The ball came in, the ball came out and that just put us under pressure really early. We managed to correct ourselves really early in the second quarter and just got back in the fight more than anything.

"It wasn’t perfect but we got ourselves back into the fight and the boys walked into half time quite positive about what we could do in the second half, but clearly we had some challenges and the second half was a lot stronger.

"We gave ourselves a chance and there was that moment where if the goal goes away, but it goes down the other end and they kick a goal which was a really big moment." 

On the defensive and contest efforts:

"I think in terms of tonight, we’ve been able to hold that end where we’ve had those injuries. We’d like it to be different but we don’t have it different, so we’ll keep chasing us, we’ll keep going after what we want.

"We weren’t able to replicate that, you’ve got to factor in a lot of things: there are conditions, there’s the opposition, there's what we’re trying to reinforce in the way we want to be able to play. I can tell you, our style doesn’t include conceding 76 inside 50s so it’ll probably start there, and it doesn’t include getting out-toughed around the ball.

"They brought a better appetite to the contest and we weren’t able to absorb that for long enough. If you’re not winning contests and you’re losing territory, it’s a hard day: our style doesn’t include that."

On the plan moving forward:

"What I can’t take away from this group is they’re fighting right until the end. It’s not all done on great method, but we’re fighting to the end. There has probably been a view of what this group has or hasn’t done in the past, but that hasn’t been my experience with these guys.

"They’ve giving what they’ve got and putting themselves within a shot. We recognise that it wasn’t our best day today to get some of those things together, but they kept coming. And I’m really pleased that that’s a great trait they’re starting to develop. 

"We’ve got some things to work on, we’ve got some things to assess, we’ll review it really hard and we’ll go after the next one. That’s what we’ll do, like we have every single week."

On Sam Durdin:

"We'll get it assessed. We're not exactly sure at this point in time [on Thursday night]. 

"Clearly we're looking at the knee to see what's going on there. He ended up going off late because he got it hit again: he said he had someone fall on it which is the reason he came off in the end. 

"We'll have to take the time to assess the damage."

On the injury list: 

"We go next man up, we’re hoping there’s another one there. That’s just the expectation for us: that they come in and play a role for us and they get it done.

"Players are not whinging about it, we’re not referencing it. We’ve really embraced trying to build team spirit within this group, play a really selfless brand of football and that requires stepping up sometimes, so that’s what we’re going to ask the players to do.

"We’ve got some things we want to achieve and they’re pretty important goals for us so we’re going to keep going after them."