After leading comfortably by 48 points at half time, Carlton faced a resurgent West Coast which cut the margin to just seven points midway through the final quarter.
Ratten said the Blues deserved credit for the way they stopped the Eagles’ charge and kicked away at the end of the game.
“I think that’s footy sometimes,” Ratten said. “You dominate and you get on a roll and you can score very freely and easily.
“We know that John Worsfold teams will come out swinging and scratching if they’re going to go down and to their credit, they got right back into the game.
“From that point of view, what I see from our blokes is a young group that composed themselves (and) worked their way through.
“I thought it was just outstanding for a young team to be nearly headed in the last quarter and to fight back and get a victory by close to six goals.”
Ratten paid tribute to the work of Chris Judd at the stoppages and the final quarter efforts of Adam Bentick and Kade Simpson in stemming West Coast’s run.
“If we could stop them kicking goals, we were a chance to win,” Ratten said.
“But I thought this was the storm that we had to weather and we did it and then we refocused. We got that one against the flow from Simpson and that seemed to be the one that burst their bubble.”
The win was just Carlton’s second victory on the road in its past 28 matches but Ratten said the records don’t bother his side.
“We’ve played some very good football through this early part of the year but (today’s effort) was one of our better ones,” he said.
“It’s probably a like everything else in 2008. We’ve really focused on what we have to do and the records that were there, well we can rewrite them and create our own history.
“And we did that through the losses and then today we got one back on our ledger for when we travel interstate.
“We’re starting to stamp our own mark going forward and history at the club so it’s really pleasing.”
