CARLTON coach Brett Ratten says his relationship with Brendan Fevola remains solid despite the pair appearing at odds in separate radio interviews at the weekend.
Ratten had a "brief chat" with Fevola after they both had their say on the full-forward's protracted contract negotiations on rival radio stations.
"Whatever Brendan does is magnified by 500 compared to nearly any other player in the competition," Ratten said of his spearhead’s decision to call in and respond to the coach’s comments.
“Whatever Brendan Fevola does – good, bad or indifferent – it gets put out there because he’s one of the characters of the game.
"But I think he's a passionate Carlton player and he wants to play at our club. He got out there and he was sick about the rumours that were floating around about his contract and he just spoke about that.
“We really didn’t speak about that [specifically]. It’s one of those things, you’d probably like him not to call up, but I think it was great that he got out there and got on the front foot and said that he wants to be at Carlton, so that’s great for us.”
Ratten remains confident the contract impasse will be solved, but could not shed any light on how far away the two parties were from a resolution.
“That’s between the management; I stay out of those sorts of things,” he said.
“The two managements are going to get together and they’ll sort it out, so we’ll find out from there; I don’t do the contracts.
“Brendan’s at the club, he wants to stay at the club, I want him at the club, so let’s not worry about him not being at the club.”