The aspect of Carlton's stellar season that's “getting lost”

Carlton is now 7-2 and a game clear in fourth after their comfortable win over GWS on Sunday afternoon.

It was an impressive win for the Blues, who were missing key position pillars Harry McKay and Lewis Young, and were without any healthy players on their list to replace them. The win was also their first at GIANTS Stadium from five attempts and broke a run of six straight losses to GWS.

North Melbourne premiership player David King believes Carlton’s speed of ball movement is catching teams off guard.

“The thing that’s getting lost with Carlton is not only are they brutal on the inside, their handball game now is next level,” King told SEN’s Whateley.

“They go from this really aggressive strong ball winners to then, they’re not fleet of foot, but they find a way to get the ball into a handball chain and then come out the front of traffic and then they’re really dangerous.

“That’s why it works forward of centre because it’s so aggressive and it’s so quick. It’s instant. As a defender playing against Carlton, you’re looking at this wave coming at you thinking ‘what am I doing here? Am I locking on one-on-one? I can’t really zone?’.

“So you get one-on-ones and everyone gets their lick of the ice-cream forward of centre.

“It doesn’t really have to rely on one target forward of centre when you play like that. Harry’s not there at the moment, but because you’re playing so fast it’s not needed.

“It’s not exposed against the Giants, because they’re not that solid defensively.

“Against other teams it will be exposed and they’ll lack that big body down there while Harry (McKay) is out, but their handball game, they handball more than any team in the competition, and you would never have thought that Voss would turn Carlton into a handball team.

“But it’s working and it’s working big. We talk about structure a lot … I still think Vossy is 30 per cent into his coaching with this club. Next year is the year, but how good is this year going? They’re setting some standards that are going to last for some time.”

Sam Walsh recorded the most ranking points of any player in Round 9, playing a different role.

The All-Australian on-baller started inside 50 and pushed into the square and King was happy to see him back to his best after dealing with a syndesmosis injury.

“It was good to see Sam Walsh back to his best. I know he’s been a good contributor for the previous few weeks and I know he’s had an injury impacted start to the year, but we are at Round 9,” he said.

“It was good to see him back to his damaging best and hitting the scoreboard, he was everything for them. It wasn’t all Patty Cripps, though he was still pretty good.”

Carlton faces their biggest challenge yet on Friday night, facing Sydney at Marvel Stadium off a five-day break.

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