Carlton coach Michael Voss has backed the call to parachute six players into the team that went down to Brisbane in the elimination final on Saturday.
Mitch McGovern, Sam Docherty, Harry McKay, Adam Cerra, Tom De Koning and Zac Williams all returned from injury for the do-or-die Gabba encounter.
However, the contest was all but over by halftime as the Blues failed to score for 57 minutes, threatening to produce the lowest-ever first-half score in a final while handing the rampaging Lions a 60-point head start.
The visitors saved face after the main break but managed to score just 11 points more than what Brisbane had at halftime as they were ejected from the finals race by a flattering 28 points.
“I think if you look at the individuals themselves they’ve all got through the game okay. We tend to put them all in the same basket, but the reality is they’re all different,” Voss said.
“We had three guys that had missed one or two weeks, so they had a body of work over the season, so that doesn’t really impact them.
“Obviously, we had the other ones, namely (Sam Docherty) and Chez (Adam Cerra) and Tom (De Koning)“
Docherty returned from a third ACL ruptured in the Blues’ Opening Round game against the Lions on the same ground.
With the scoreboard reading doughnuts for Carlton deep into the second quarter, Voss was forced to activate De Koning to give them a presence, a move the coach admitted wasn’t ideal.
“We tried to manage Tom’s minutes a bit at the start of the game. We didn’t want to activate him when we did, but we were left with no choice with our score,” he said.
“I’d have loved his availability so there’s no question on that. I think if we’d had our way, we would’ve liked to start them all at the same time, but that’s why we had to manage a very unusual set of circumstances.
“Tom was probably just one or two runs short of being able to put in 100 minutes. The option was to not play him or play him in that situation, so we chose to activate him and pleased we did.
“We needed that little bit of presence down the line.”