2 hours ago.<\/p>\n
Updated\u00a059 minutes ago<\/p>\n
News Sport Network<\/p>\n
At halftime Michael Voss was planning his exit strategy.<\/p>\n
Half an hour later he and the rest of the Carlton faithful were daring to dream.<\/p>\n
From 49 points down early in the third quarter, Carlton\u2019s second-half fightback \u2013 a blue moon event in 2026 \u2013 should breathe some life into a downtrodden fan base.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t a win. But after a season of sorrow, pushing the reigning premiers to the brink on their home deck almost felt like it.<\/p>\n
Few gave the Blues any chance of an upset at the Gabba but when a bullish Voss boasted pre-match they had spent all week working on their defence, their fans might have expected more than what they served up in the first half.<\/p>\n
They trailed Brisbane by 38 at major break and their 18 points was a season-low halftime score.<\/p>\n
For a team that had spent all week working on its defence, the scoreboard and the tackle count \u2013 31-15 in Brisbane\u2019s favour \u2013 was telling.<\/p>\n
Perhaps even worse, the Blues\u2019 sole strength this season \u2013 clearance \u2013 was being dominated by Brisbane.<\/p>\n
Football boss Chris Davies took a red pen to the team\u2019s deficiencies in the pre-game and his critiques seemed to be playing out in real time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe challenge for us this year \u2026 has been short periods of time in the game,\u201d Davies told 3AW.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we\u2019re not getting ascendancy from a stoppage perspective we\u2019re not able to move the ball as well as we need to from the back half.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen stoppages are going against us and field position is going against us we haven\u2019t been good enough to this point to be able to address that.\u201d<\/p>\n
It felt like a new low for Voss\u2019 men. <\/p>\n
But then the unthinkable happened. Carlton came out after halftime and showed some fight.<\/p>\n
A five-goal salvo to end the third term cut the margin from 49 points to 20 at the turn for home. When Harry McKay kicked Carlton\u2019s sixth-straight a minute into the final quarter it was game-on.<\/p>\n
Even after Brisbane responded, the Blues still refused to yield.<\/p>\n
Davies said Voss \u201cdeserves great credit\u201d for keeping the playing group connected despite the dour on-field results.<\/p>\n
Their second-half fight certainly looked more like a team that believes in itself and its coach.<\/p>\n
The question is, how much more rope does Voss have to play with? And did this performance give him any more?<\/p>\n
Davies deftly danced around a definitive answer when asked if the club had to make a call on the coach\u2019s future before the end of the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think \u2026 that will clearly be a discussion from the commentators,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy role right here, right now is to provide as much support to Michael as I possibly can.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe knows \u2013 he\u2019s a realist \u2013 that our performance needs to get better, and he\u2019s working really hard to get that done and I give him great credit for his want to make our team better.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"2 hours ago. Updated\u00a059 minutes ago News Sport Network At halftime Michael Voss was planning his exit strategy.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[8955,3041,23,133,99,5010,8956,368,8957,8527,120,212,1079,8958],"class_list":["post-7589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brisbane","tag-matchidafl20260902","tag-albert-perez","tag-australia","tag-australia-and-new-zealand","tag-brisbane","tag-carlton-blues","tag-eliminational-final-looming","tag-getty-images-inc","tag-live-scores","tag-michael-voss","tag-oceania","tag-queensland","tag-the-gabba","tag-two-time-reigning-premiers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}