‘Really clear for us’: Blues’ reality check as Voss forecasts key players could return

Carlton coach Michael Voss forecast a host of key players could return for the Blues’ blockbuster clash with Melbourne at the MCG on Thursday night.

Mitch McGovern (hamstring), Jack Martin (hamstring) and Caleb Marchbank (back) will all be in the mix to face the Demons, and after experiencing a hard time in the medical room recently, Voss was “absolutely” encouraged by how many members of his best 22 were coming back from injury.

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Adam Cerra (hamstring) and David Cuningham (calf) also made their returns on Friday night in the Blues’ agonising loss to Collingwood at the MCG, however Zac Williams (tight glute) was subbed out.

“We’ll separate the two because you’ve got to look at your system and sort of say, ‘Where does the system need to improve? And what phase of the game is that that we need to get after it to continue to reinforce about the way we want to play in these types of games?’,” Voss said.

“And then there’s the talent that helps your system get better and obviously having some guys to be able to add into that helps your system be able to execute that little bit better.

“So hopefully there’s a couple more to return next week.”

Adam Saad (hamstring), Jesse Motlop (hamstring) and Lachie Fogarty (wrist) still remain at least another couple of weeks away.

Voss agreed that back-to-back narrow losses to top-four contenders Geelong and Collingwood served as a reality check for the Blues who are also considered to be in the premiership race this year.

“Right now that’s what’s been put to task,” he said.

“There’s tension on it and good sides who have lots of threats and have a good style of footy and they can play it for long periods of time, they’ll put that under tension.

“So we’re getting some really important feedback for us right now. It’s really clear for us. We’re not searching for it. It’s really clear. Our job is to just make sure we execute for longer and be more disciplined for longer, do our role for longer, execute those kicks a little bit more.

“When you get into games like this, it’s about margins. It’s the marginal gains. It’s the little things that you want to get after and we’ll keep showing that to the players and we’ll keep trying to improve individually and we’ll keep trying to improve as a team.”

But Voss intimated his side wasn’t far off from producing their best footy.

“We’re playing some good football. We’re playing some really good footy,” Voss said.

“We also know that we’ve got to continue to progress and I talked about defence last week but we’re referring to that every single week. It’s important to us every single week and we’ve got to build off the back of it because it can’t be the moving spotlight.