CARLTON'S tough task in facing Geelong this weekend was made even more difficult by the return of Cats star Brad Ottens, but assistant coach Gavin Crosisca remains confident the Blues’ back line can get the job done.
“You’d probably think he’d play forward a fair bit due to not playing since the Grand Final almost, so it’s a long time to miss in footy,” Crosisca said on Friday.
“He’s a big man, I’m not too sure if he would rely on his fitness to get him around the ground, but I would say he will spend brief periods in the ruck just to give Blake a bit of a spell.
“Whether he goes forward or how much time he spends forward we don’t know [for sure], but we’ve got players to accommodate Ottens, yes.”
The good form of Andrew Carrazzo and Setanta O’hAilpin down back against Fremantle has been a positive for Carlton, as is the return from injury of Bret Thornton for his first game in a month.
Crosisca admitted, however, that the Blues were still two players short of their best back six.
“We lose Jarrad Waite [to a one-week suspension], who is probably in career-best form, and we lost Michael Jamison a couple of weeks ago, who is probably the most-improved full-back in the competition,” he said.
“So we were just starting to get the back six together and getting them comfortable and getting a little bit of synergy in regards to the way they’re playing which is always a positive for your defenders.
“So we’ve copped a couple of lightning bolts there, but Thornton comes back and he can play small and tall.”
Dennis Armfield, taken 46th overall in the 2007 NAB AFL Draft, will make his debut against the Cats with the 21-year-old’s pace set to be an asset on the slick Telstra Dome surface.
“He’s very quick and his last few games in the VFL have been very solid,” he said.
“He played on Ezra Poyas [former Richmond AFL player] last week and did quite a good job.
"So Ratts has brought him in for the Telstra Dome ground I think, more so than other things because he is very quick and can play a number of roles.
“He can play as a small defender, he can probably tag in the midfield if needed and he can be that real hard tackling, chasing small forward that can hopefully snaffle a couple of goals.”
Earlier in the week, Brett Ratten agreed facing Geelong on the back of a heavy loss to the Magpies was not ideal, but an optimistic Crosisca offered another possible scenario.
“They’re [either] going to be very angry and annoyed at themselves that they lost last week or Collingwood could have dented their confidence a little bit,” he said.
“Hopefully it’s that way, but we just need to worry about the way we play.
“We’ve probably based [our preparation] on the way Collingwood went about it against them last week, [but] we do try and put the opposition under as much pressure as we can anyway with our tackles and so forth.
“We were pretty good [in that area] last week against the Dockers so it’s a matter of continuing that on. We always ask for consistency from the players in the way they go about it and defensive pressure is obviously a key issue so we’ll need to be really on our game in that regard.”
