Blueseum - History of the Carlton Football Club

Geelong	2.7	19	7.10	52	13.18	96	19.19	133
Carlton	2.2	14	6.3	39	6.4	40	12.5	77

Venue: Telstra Dome

Date: Sat 31 May 2008, 7:10pm

Result: Loss by 56 points

Umpires: Farmer, Ryan, Avon

Crowd: 46,231

Goalkickers: Fevola 3, Gibbs 2, Betts 2, Judd, Stevens, Scotland, Wiggins, Cloke

Reports: Nil

Injuries: Paul Bower (AC joint)

Game Review

The Blues took on the reigning Premiers Geelong in this Saturday night match at the Dome, but came away disappointed. The Cats, having lost their first game of the year in the week before to a desperate Collingwood, came to play and made a number of successful and hard tackles on the Blues to set the tone of the game (whilst you have to recognise their hardness, it must be said that in other weeks of Season 2008, many of these tackles would have brought about free kicks to Carlton for in-the-back!).

It was a strong enough start by the Blues, with good control of the ball through the middle, Fevola leading hard and doing well plus a sound defence led by Paul Bower and the returning-from-injury Bret Thornton in the absence of Waite, Jamison, Houlihan and Bannister. Whilst the scoreboard and some fans would say the Cats' bad kicking for goal kept us in the first half, it has to be pointed out that many of our Inside 50 entries failed due to bad kicking to leading targets. The kicking by both teams was down, but the intensity of the Cats could not be questioned.

Near the end of the second quarter was a controversial few minutes where the Blues played 'tempo football'. With the Cats surging (the Blues were in front early in the second), Carlton held on to the ball and chipped the ball around for approximately 4 minutes of play without making any ground. As it turned out, Carlton scored a goal from this - but the fans in the outer were making their displeasure known. Was this a positive tactic? Was this a good thing? Some say yes - we slowed them down, some say no - it was bad to watch. In the end the tactic worked to limit the margin to 13 points at the half.

We wouldn't get the chance to use the tactic again, as the Cats pumped the Blues in a hard and tough third quarter where their medium forwards and the brilliant Gary Ablett Junior tore us apart. We seemed permanently camped in their half as we could not clear through past the centre of the ground whilst most of our leading forwards were covered. The Cats were simply too good, too strong and too fast for us, and the game ended in a burst of Cats' superiority in that quarter. In the last quarter, the Blues were able to strike back a little to keep the scoreboard ticking over with some nice goals but the damage had been done.

For the Blues, Fevola played well all game on Cats Full Back Matthew Scarlett, debutant Dennis Armfield played well and our midfield got enough of the ball, however it must be said that for large parts of the second and third quarters all Carlton were really able to do was find targets 20-30 metres away, such was the strength of the Cats' defence in their 5th successive victory over the Blues.

The Blues fell to 11th place on the ladder after this loss.

Team

B:	44 Andrew Carrazzo	18 Paul Bower	15 Steven Browne
HB:	32 Bret Thornton	17 Setanta Ó hAilpín	16 Shaun Grigg
C:	8 Matthew Kreuzer	5 Chris Judd (c)	29 Heath Scotland
HF:	6 Kade Simpson	14 Brad Fisher	3 Marc Murphy
F:	19 Eddie Betts	25 Brendan Fevola	28 Cameron Cloke
Ruck:	22 Shaun Hampson	7 Adam Bentick	24 Nick Stevens (vc)
Interchange:	2 Jordan Russell	4 Bryce Gibbs	27 Dennis Armfield
Interchange:	34 Simon Wiggins
Coach:	Brett Ratten
Emg:	21 Mark Austin, 37 Jake Edwards, 36 Darren Pfeiffer