EVER since the arrival of Carlton's new high-performance boss Rob Inness in September last year, a three-word buzz phrase has been the talk of Blues players and officials at Ikon Park.
'Speed and Power.'
It's the motto Inness has brought across with him to Carlton following successful stints while working with both Richmond and Sydney across a 12-year career in the AFL industry, and it's what the Blues hope will turn their rotten injury luck around across the next season.
Michael Voss doesn't mind 'Contest and Pressure' as an alternative catchphrase, but even he concedes it's 'Speed and Power' that has taken off among Carlton's playing and coaching group.
For the Blues, it's also been a case of so-far, so-good. Aside from the ruptured patella that will sideline Nic Newman for most, if not all of the 2025 season, the Blues are relatively healthy. It's a welcome change from last year, where Voss spent large parts of the season being lucky to have 30 available players to choose from.
"Speed and power has come out a lot," Voss told AFL.com.au last week. "That's the new three-word motto, I reckon. 'Speed And Power'. They've just taken to it and they've enjoyed the freshness of it.
"A lot of the work that was done was done before the off-season. But, to the players' credit, they took that on board and we've been able to have a successful pre-season on the back end of it.
"When I say successful pre-season, we look at players that have trained and been able to get up. We're really healthy. That's been pleasing to see. We've had a couple we'd have liked not to have, like losing Nic Newman. That was a big disappointment. But he's been the main one, really.
"Otherwise, everyone has had a form of pre-season and is doing OK."
That includes Sam Walsh and Charlie Curnow, who have endured setbacks of their own across pre-season. Curnow underwent a procedure on Tuesday to remove a screw leftover from a previous surgery, while Walsh remains on track to feature in at least one scratch match after a hamstring problem.
Alex Cincotta and Newman are now the club's only confirmed absentees for its round one fixture, while Curnow is touch-and-go, with Inness' methods already proving effective in helping a large number of Blues back to fitness.
"I have noticed it (a big difference)," Voss said of Inness' arrival.
"The big challenge coming back from last season was how do we raise the standard in everything that we do? You've got to acknowledge what's working and what's not working. There's a lot that is.
"Clearly, you don't get in that position if there are things that are going for you. But there are some things that we need to be able to address as well. Sometimes they can be really obvious things, really large things. But, sometimes, those things are in the really marginal detail, little things we need to be able to get better at.
"In the end, it compounds over time. It shows up sometimes when you don't want it to. The reality is, when we got to the end of the year last season we weren't in peak condition. We need to be in better condition than that to be able to have any chance to be able to contend."
Jack Silvagni (knee), Blake Acres (back), Corey Durdin (shoulder) and Matt Cottrell (shoulder) are the others to have missed time this summer, but their returns have been timed to the point where all four should return for the upcoming series of scratch matches.
It's a far cry from late last season, where Voss gave AFL debuts to Jaxon Binns, Cooper Lord and Ashton Moir in a crucial final fortnight of the season given the extent of Carlton's injury woes.
"We need a little bit of luck," Voss said.
"Some of the controllables around soft tissue, we've been able to have some success with. But that's never not going to be there, either. We all appreciate the environment we live in, you are going to get injuries. It's just the nature of it.
"But can we control the ones we want to control? The ones that are a bit more traumatic, we don't really get much control over those. The soft tissue injuries and how we manage that and what's in our program and how consistently do we play at peak performance throughout the entire year? That will be a big conversation for us."
