Carlton coach Brett Ratten has lamented the late-quarter lapses in concentration that cost his team dearly in Saturday night’s loss to Essendon.
The Bombers were able to score two late goals in both the second and third terms at the MCG which Ratten felt had an adverse effect on both his players and the scoreboard.
“We’re doing a lot of hard work for not a hell of a lot of reward because we let it slip through at critical times,” Ratten said.
“I think our ball movement and the way we played was a lot better, but there were patches through there where our pressure wasn’t good enough and we just let goals slip through our fingers at critical times in the game.
“That can be demoralising for a team and with young players you need to grab your chances and hang on. If we had gone in [to the three-quarter time break] 19 points up it might have been a different mentality going into the last quarter for Essendon and for us.
“When teams kick a goal late in a quarter with the pump up of the arm and things like that, it can be a little bit deflating and it’s a real energy boost for the opposition. For us to cop that on the back hand, it didn’t help our group.”
Essendon took the game away from Carlton with the first five goals of the last quarter with the Blues’ coach attributing his side’s disappointing finish to poor skill execution by his players rather than a lack of fitness.
Carlton skipper Chris Judd contributed seven of his team’s 41 clearances with the Blues’ inability to capitalise on their dominance in and under the packs a sore point for Ratten.
“Inside the game we absolutely smashed them, absolutely smashed them,” he said.
“Outside the game, at the end of the day, they get us because of maybe a bit more run, I’m not sure; they got us outside with their cleanness.
“That frustrates a coach straight after a game, not just on a Monday. It’s a bit of a pill to swallow; we came here tonight thinking we were pretty spot on to get the four points and again we’ve come close without getting there.”
Ratten appeared surprised when quizzed on a lopsided free-kick count that saw his side penalised 25 times to the Bombers’ 14.
“Geez, I might have to look at that; that’s a big discrepancy isn’t it?” he said.
“In a game that’s an arm wrestle and it’s 25 to 14 … at the end of the day, the umpires call it, but that’s a huge discrepancy; 25-14 in a game that’s an arm wrestle. That’s probably a bit interesting.”
The Blues have now equaled the longest winless streak in the club’s history, 14 matches stretching from the 1901 to 1902 seasons, but Ratten dismissed the statistic as irrelevant.
“We don’t change any of our focus in developing our players and going forward,” he said.
“This not about right now, this is about the future and how quickly we can get the Carlton Football Club into the finals.
To start playing finals football, firstly we need to start winning games, but it’s not about records or we haven’t done this or we haven’t done that, we just need to make sure our own backyard is in place.
“The Carlton football list from 2007 to 2008 has changed so I think the record, when you look at it, it involves people that weren’t even here, so now we’re looking at 2008 and it’s not so much about 2007.”
