FRESH from the breakthrough win over Collingwood, Carlton coach Brett Ratten has challenged his players to reproduce the style of football they displayed against the Pies for the rest of the season.

Ratten praised his team’s hard-nosed approach during the 23-point win that snapped a 14-game losing streak, but said he would be working hard to ensure his players were properly focused on this week’s opponent after the emotion-charged win in front of a large MCG crowd.

“We’ve set a standard here now and the players know that that’s the standard we’re trying to set for our team,” Ratten said from MC Labour Park on Wednesday.

“We need to make sure that each week we bring that game to the table; that’s the challenge for the players. It doesn’t matter who we play this week or next week; we should have the mindset to come out and play like that.

“There’s always a danger [of complacency] when you’re coming off a victory [regardless] of who you’re going to play. I think that’s the challenge for us; to win two games in a row [actually] not even that, it’s to bring that game that we brought last week with that physicality.

“I’ll probably reinforce it at training that if players maybe didn’t achieve these standards they might not be in the team. That’s the path we’ll take; that we need to play like this to be a respected AFL team. That was the standard that we set and that’s the standard that we’re going to stick by.

“I think everyone’s pleased with the outcome of last week, but we know we’ve got a big job at hand against Melbourne who are sort of in the same situation as we were last week. They’ll come out swinging and we need to make sure that we bring that game that we played against Collingwood to the table.”

The win meant Ratten’s Blues avoided outright ownership of the longest run of losses in the club’s history and was also the first time since round one of 2007 that the team conceded less than 100 points. 

Carlton was often able to effectively control the tempo of the contest which Ratten said was a promising sign for his developing team.

“I think we’ve played at breakneck speed for a long period of time and I don’t think that helps us because we do get scored against and that can deflate confidence,” he said.

“We kicked over 100 [points] and we kept the opposition to under 100, so that’s the requirement of AFL footy.

“If you do that most weeks, you win most games and I just think we had the balance right offensively and defensively; I thought it was a big plus for us.

“We had a focus to be more aggressive and more physical and I think we did that so I think the players got a lot of confidence out of that going forward [to know] that when we do bring that to the table, we’re going to be a hard team to beat.”

Ratten, who was an assistant coach at Melbourne along with Mark Riley, knows full well the capabilities of many of the Demon players and maintained they would be a dangerous opponent despite their winless start to the season.