No one safe as Blues rethink line-up
The Age
Wednesday July 1, 2009
CARLTON coach Brett Ratten has warned that no one is safe from the chopping block after the Blues' 69-point loss to Essendon - a match he described as the most disappointing of his coaching career.Ratten said several players could be dropped from the team for the "unacceptable performance"."I just thought where was the fight? When we were going down a bit I thought that maybe we didn't fight the fight in the second half," he said. "There could be up to three or four changes, depending on how it all pans out."The match committee will meet tomorrow to finalise the team that will play Fremantle in Perth on Sunday.Although experienced midfielders Nick Stevens and Heath Scotland were singled out after Friday night's game, Ratten was more concerned by the attitude shown by the team as a whole."Where one player (young defender Tayte Pears) can actually run the full length of the field and past three players, and no one comes off to pick him up, that says a few things to me that we're not in it together," he said."I thought there was a bit of self-survival there."Ratten was also unsure if full-forward Brendan Fevola would recover sufficiently from surgery on a little finger to take his place against the Dockers.Injured defender Paul Bower is expected to miss up to four weeks with a medial ligament strain, but will be replaced by Bret Thornton, who returns from a hamstring injury.He pointed out that in the preceding two rounds, Carlton had beaten Brisbane at the Gabba and come close to defeating St Kilda."You reflect and think maybe that one (the Essendon game) was out of character," he said.He said the team may have felt deflated after they had given up a 14-point lead at the 18-minute mark of the second quarter. "We wait as much as maybe the media - what our team's response is, after a performance like that, how are they going to come back?"
© 2009 The Age
