But Carlton and Voss are again ruing their wastefulness after scoring a miserable 2.5 in an otherwise dominant second term that could have put them in a winning position. They have not scored more than 59 points in any of their past five matches.
Voss also slammed as “unacceptable” their meagre tackle count of 33,including only 13 in the second half,but said his players were “adapting” to his messaging in the past month without getting the reward.
“We want to celebrate as a team[and] we want to celebrate with our supporter base,so it hurts a lot,especially when there are parts to it that we played some dominant football,” he said.
“We’re putting enormous pressure on ourselves by not being able to finish our work,and that puts pressure on your system because you don’t have your way the whole time in this game.
“Essendon were able to put the foot to the floor in the third quarter,and they scored 7.1[whereas] in the second quarter when we had the dominance in our half,we kicked 2.5. Sometimes,the game is simple like that.”
Voss also confirmed out-of-sorts skipper Patrick Cripps was not hindered by injury and was simply mired in a form slump. The reigning Brownlow medallist had only two handballs in the first quarter,eight disposals to half-time,and 19 by the finish without having a meaningful impact on the contest.
“[Cripps] is completely fine. Sometimes you lose a bit of form,and he’s running through a little bit of that,” Voss said.