AFL

Blues won't overreact to tough AFL opening defeat

Mar 6, 2026

Blues Swans — The Blues came off much the worse in a feisty season-opening clash with Sydney. -AAP Image

Carlton coach Michael Voss won't throw the baby out with the bathwater after the Blues pre-season optimism was crushed in a heavy season-opening defeat to Sydney.

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Vibes were high at the Blues after an off-season of change, with seven fresh faces in their opening round team.

But after a positive, intense start on Thursday night, Carlton were brought undone by a relentless 12-goal third quarter from Sydney and went on to lose 20.12 (132) to 10.9 (69) at the SCG.

But Voss insisted it was a very different scenario to last year's demoralising round one loss to Richmond that put him under pressure.

"No, there's a good body of work," Voss said. 

"We're sitting at round zero. So you put that in context for the whole season. Completely different because completely different personnel that we've got there.  

"We've got a new style of football that we're trying to play. We obviously clearly couldn't execute that for as long as we wanted to tonight, and that put us under an extreme amount of pressure.

"So we'll go back a look at that and we'll see what we can learn from it and then we'll make adjustments, train hard. Then we'll turn up next week and we'll go again."

While planning to heavily review the "hugely disappointing" third quarter against the scintillating Swans, Voss wasn't concerned, noting Carlton had finished off pre-season games strongly.

"It wasn't a great 30 minutes. I think we can accept that," he said.

"We've seen a lot of good stuff over the course of the preseason that gives us great confidence that we can correct it quickly and get to work.  

"We've got work to do, so we're not stepping away from that."

Voss took plenty of heart from the opening half, when the Blues battered Sydney around the ball.

"We had some great footy, but we just really let ourselves down,' he said. 

Voss planned to keep sticking with fresh faces and hailed positive debuts from Jagga Smith (27 disposals) and Harry Dean (15 disposals, six intercepts).

"When you look at Harry Dean today, how he went down back, he had some amazing moments," he said.

"And we see our first game with Jagga Smith going through midfield, he's learned a lot about his game that's going to ultimately make us better."

Adam Saad (hamstring) will go for scans as the Blues lick their wounds ahead of Thursday's clash with Richmond.