Carlton Blues star Sam Walsh ruled out of West Coast Eagles clash at Optus Stadium

West Australian

12 hours ago

Carlton coach Michael Voss expects midfielder Sam Walsh to be available in the approach to the finals, after the Blues prime mover was ruled out of Sunday's game against West Coast with a hot spot on his foot.
Walsh pulled up lame after a training session at Ikon Park on Friday and after a series of scans and consultation over the next 24 hours was withdrawn from the team.
'He'll take his five or six weeks and hopefully we get him back bigger and stronger, but there is no surgery required, it is more at the early stages of it, which is why the timeline is probably not as long as what it could have been,' Voss said.
'It's inconvenient for him, it's inconvenient for us, but you know, he's a real pro. Once he knows what he's dealing with, he's puts his mind pretty much into his rehab.'
Jaxon Binns comes into the 23 as his replacement and is expected to slot on to a wing.
'He's been certainly on the edges for more than a few weeks and certainly throughout the whole the whole year,' Voss said.
'So he'll come in and be able to get the job done.'
The Blues, who trained at Trinity College in East Perth shortly after touching down on Saturday, will also be without Harry McKay for a second match, sidelined with a knee injury.
'We'll do a little bit more investigation. We were obviously hoping that he could do a little bit more this week than what he actually end up getting done,'
The Blues have a strong recent record at Optus Stadium, scoring an average 116.2 points over the past four games while only conceding 44.
Charlie Curnow has averaged 6.5 goals over that period, but kicked a wayward 2.4 when the Blues torched the Eagles in Gather Round in April.
But Voss is wary of a team on the improve.
'Their form over the last month has been pretty good,' Voss said.
'They've been able to … generally push sides. They certainly look a lot more settled.
'There's a brand that's certainly emerging that you can see. And to be fair, there was a brand. I mean, the last time we played them, that was emerging as well, but they just looked a little bit unsettled and have had more time to be able to play that game style that they're after.
'Like all games we play, we make no assumptions in this competition. We expect to get the very best of every single team we play.'
Voss said the Blues had looked at West Coast's big win in the territory battle in Bunbury against the Roos, when they recorded 22 more inside 50s but lost the game with wayward kicking.
'We've looked at it, but we tend to look at things over over time, rather than one offs,' Voss said.
'We tend to look at the trends of the game and the key threats coming into that and they've certainly been able to find a few.
'Our job is always to find that balance of looking at what we need to be able to get done, and bringing our strengths to the table and then finding out where can we obviously take away some of theirs to get the leverage we need.'