It has been an incredibly challenging year for the Blues and head coach Brendon Bolton.
Coming off a 104-point loss to Adelaide on Saturday night, this is what he had to say as the curtain closed on their 2018 season.
On Carlton’s poor efficiency…
Yeah, it’s disappointing. If we talk specifically about the game we win the inside 50s, funnily enough in a big heavy loss, by seven so clearly there’s some issues with efficiency. We’re turning the ball over far too much with some ordinary decisions. We’re alright at the contest, I think we won the contested possession stat by 20 but too many [players] going in to hunt the ball they [Adelaide] get us on the outside and then their uncontested marks go through the roof. On the back of that they scored at 65 per cent of their entries inside of their 50 and we get more of them than they do but we only score inside the 30s going inside 50. Clearly the balance on the outside they won… we win the territory battle but not with any efficiency or any ability to hold it there. That’s the game in a nutshell, really.
On getting the fundamentals wrong…
We didn’t get to lay on the ball, they scored from stoppages at times where positioning was wrong. It’s just lots of little fundamentals that add up so for me to say it’s one or the other, it’s always a combination of the above.
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On All-Australian nominee, Patrick Cripps…
Have a look at his clearance rate, his contested possession rate today, his centre square bounce. I think it’s never ever been done before, the contested numbers in a year. But therein lies two things. We need to build our youngsters up to support him, that’s through hard work, but there’s also a great role model for them to see what they need to do in that space.
On a positive side in a season to forget…
We’re all human. Players, our club administrators, the board, me, we’re all people and we’re so invested in wanting this club to go where it needs to go. You do go on an emotional roller coaster, there is no doubt about that, however the one thing is when you do go on that emotional rollercoaster you do not get distracted or go off plan. Very easily you can do that with emotion. Rash decisions. We know the challenging realities of age profile and injury this year, we’ve never once used them as an excuse, and we’ve stayed absolutely resolute in this plan. It’s been testing yes, but it’s also been quite fulfilling that our Club’s just tightened as people.
