Carlton coach Michael Voss made a telling concession about the Blues’ stuttering progress under him on a night when the club’s success-starved fans booed the team and walked out en masse.
Thirty games into Voss’s reign at IKON Park, the Blues are clinging to a place in the eight as they head into a potentially season-defining stretch with games to come against the Western Bulldogs, Collingwood, Melbourne, Sydney and Essendon – all of whom have genuine final ambitions.
For the third time in four weeks, the Blues flunked the test against an in-form side, slumping to a demoralising 26-point defeat to Brisbane, who staked their claims as a serious premiership fancy with a fifth straight win.
The loss follows failures against Adelaide and St Kilda, who appear to have marched past them in a year many expect the Blues to make the leap into September.
The pressure in building on Carlton coach Michael Voss.Credit: Getty Images
It raised the question if the Blues, who fell agonisingly short of their first finals campaign since 2013 last year, should be further advanced in Voss’s second season at the helm.
“That’s a really difficult question,” Voss said. “No, I would like to be playing better … and right now we’re not playing (at) the level that we want.”
Many in the partisan crowd of 45,548 – the highest home and away attendance between the two clubs – voiced their disapproval at three-quarter time, booing the team as players went into their huddle. The crowd also thinned out noticeably in the final term.
Earlier in the day, the Blues announced a record membership for an eighth season in a row. Voss said he had no objection with fans venting their anger.
“I think what we’ve said from the very start is that we’ve got a very passionate group of supporters,” Voss said.
“We hit our membership record today. And so when you’ve got that wave of support, you want them to bring the noise and with that, there’s good, and with that there’s some things that you’re going to have to go through as well.
“What they should know is that they’ve got a group here that have a really strong desire to want to get better and we’ve got some feedback today that says that we need to we need to go to work on a few things. We understand the frustration, and we’ll get after it. That’s our promise.”
Despite winning the contested possession count by 23 and having 57 more possessions, the Blues were smothered by the Lions, who scored 13 of their 15 goals through turnover. Vice-captain Jacob Weitering and All Australian half-back Adam Saad were among those whose clangers cost goals.
“We were making so many errors with a ball in hand, it was actually our effort that kept us in the game,” Voss said. “But then as they started to get that ascendancy in the third quarter around the ball, they were able to execute a fair bit better than what we were.
“What was inconsistent was our execution and just fluctuated far too much. Some costly turnovers that we were getting scores against were not where you want them, which is in your back half and they were able to score off them.
“They had nine shots on goal from their forward 50, that’s just too many. You let one through that you shouldn’t and it just puts pressure on your team to be able to continue to execute.
“You might force it a little bit more than what you should, potentially your roles start to stray from how we want to set up the game because we’re looking to probably solve it ourselves. It just creates a few pressure points on us and we just weren’t able to execute for long enough.”
Carlton captain Patrick Cripps was comprehensively beaten by Josh Dunkley, who was arguably best afield with 33 disposals and 13 tackles to the Brownlow Medallist’s 17.
Lions coach Chris Fagan, in his 25th season in the AFL, described Dunkley’s performance as “one of the great games I’ve ever seen”.
“If you weigh it all up – he had 33 touches,13 tackles and kept Cripps to a quiet game,” Fagan said.
“I would have settled for Cripps having a quiet game, to be honest with you, but Josh’s influence on the contest was exceptional and his leadership since he’s been at the club has been outstanding.
“He’s happy to roll the sleeves up and do a role for the team.
“He sets a great example to everybody else in that regard.
“I mean, he studied Cripps all week. We just thought pretty important player for them and just did one of the really great defensive and offensive performances, I reckon.”
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