A trio of milestones for Carlton will be celebrated when it faces Adelaide at a sold out Marvel Stadium on Saturday afternoon.
Reigning Gary Ayres medallist Sam Walsh will notch up 100 AFL games, match-winning winger Blake Acres brings up his 150th , while coach Michael Voss combines an AFL playing and coaching career poised to tally 450 matches.
With a job to do against a Crows outfit, which has proved tricky for the Blues to handle over the last two seasons, Voss acknowledged the space to praise the individual milestones would be there.
“450 (games) makes me feel older, so that’s the only thing that achieves,” Voss said with jocularity at IKON Park today.
“We do the acknowledgement (of milestones) as we always would.
“It is important to be able to step back sometimes and to acknowledge milestones that happen.
“These are small ones along the journey, they’re personal journeys and they’re their own story to tell.
“We’ll share that story with those two (Acres and Walsh) and what their journey is to this point in time, but then we shift gears into what we need to be able to do and the job we have got at hand.”
Without overshadowing what Acres has achieved in his short time at Carlton, Walsh’s return to the field has been eagerly awaited and so has the fervour around his ton of appearances in navy blue.
However, the absence of the gun midfielder has not wilted Carlton’s winning ability.
The 4-0 start to the season is the first time this has occurred for the Blues since the premiership-winning year of 1995.
To state the bleating obvious, there would rarely be a doubt in the mind of any about the increased capacity Walsh can deliver for a Carlton midfield which has barely been lukewarm around stoppages and clearances this season.
Though Voss pragmatically highlighted one man can never be the answer.
“I don’t want to underestimate Sam Walsh’s influence on the team,” Voss said.
“But if we think he is the difference, we are going down the wrong path, that is for sure.
“We’ve taken a squad mentality into everything we’ve done and appreciate there is one person that can step in and have a good role and have a good say in that.
“Sam coming in helps a bit with that, but we can’t be thinking that is the fix for us.”
Walsh moved freely and openly in a light skills session this morning after ticking off the checkpoints of a main session on Thursday.
His recovery from a back complaint has been subject of much speculation surrounding not only his availability this season, but his long-term future and output.
Voss allayed any fears or worries about his star on-baller.
“Where it started and the path we took, he had to go into a recovery period and rehabilitation period and we built him steadily back into the fold,” Voss explained.
“Outside of making it sure we treated it that way, he’s been able to step through the gears as required.
“Thankfully, he’s been through those pretty well.”
It has been a cautious but successful path back to senior football from what was described earlier this year by Carlton assistant coach Jordan Russell as a ‘grumbly’ back.
With Walsh’s availability set to give the Blues’ on-ball brigade a boost, Voss did concede a more balanced output from scoring is what he desires from his team.
Carlton is minus 41 points at scores from stoppages when attributing the tally of all four games it has played this season.
However, scores from turnover have spiked in a positive direction.
“We don’t want to be heavily weighted particularly in one area,” Voss said.
“To be a good footy team you need to know what you are good at.
“For us, it’s being able to get that time in the front half, however that turns out, whether that is the turnover game or whether that is at stoppages.
“We’d like both of them to come together at some stage, because as the games get bigger and as the year progresses you want to join those things a little tighter.
“It just means we are still not quite the finished product.
“We still need to get after a few things and if we can get that balanced profile we are after then we are going to be a very hard side to beat.”