HARRY McKay's successful tribunal challenge was "worth a throw at the stumps", but the ongoing issue of head-high contact and how that is adjudicated is far from clear, leaving Carlton coach Michael Voss as the latest coach to publicly warn his players about how they attack the contest.

McKay will play in Thursday night's opening game of Gather Round against Adelaide after the tribunal downgraded his one-game striking penalty to a fine.

Speaking in the shadow of the Harry J. McKay stand at Unley Oval in Adelaide on Wednesday afternoon before training, Voss said he was "pretty happy" the hearing went their way.

"They get a nice basket of goodies from me in the next little while," he said of Carlton's tribunal advisors.

"It's nice to have him. To be able to get that from medium to low (impact) is a fairly accurate assessment.

"You're never confident going into those, but it was worth a throw at the stumps."

But Voss also acknowledged the issue of head-high contact is far from resolved.

"It's really difficult at the moment while we're working through these new ... criteria around the tribunal, and their gradings," he said.

"Everyone is trying to find what that level is and there were obviously points that we felt we needed to challenge to be able to get that accurate information for the future.

"There's still a bit of grey. We have to temper our approach when it comes to anything above the shoulders.

"That's probably not just an obvious thing to say to Harry, but an obvious thing to say to the competition."

Carlton will also welcome back star midfielder Sam Walsh, who will play his first game of the season.

"We're pleased to see he's been able to tick all the boxes to get himself back for this particular game ... he's been really missed," Voss said.

"I'd love to think he could just hit the ground running and it wouldn't surprise me if he did, but we have to temper our expectations.

"He hasn't played football for a long period ... it's effectively his first game of the season.

"If you go on his training, you'd go in pretty confident that he'll have an influence, but we also have to recognise he's a little bit behind the others."

Voss said Walsh's hard running would give the Blues a major boost.

"He's just probably a really different dynamic to what we already have there," he said.

"We've got our bulls - we have plenty of those who know how to put their head in the hole.

"Walshy certainly knows how to do that, but he also knows how to run hard on the outside and link us up a little bit."

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