CARLTON coach Michael Voss has sung the praises of key forward Harry McKay after his performance in the Blues 18-point win over Geelong on Sunday afternoon.
Voss said the 27-year-old was "critically important" to the Blues and was "rapt" to hear the Carlton fans cheering him on.
BLUES v CATS Full match coverage and stats
McKay kicked three goals and took a game-high 12 marks, including a number at key moments in the final quarter when Geelong were threatening to come back into the game.
It was just McKay's second full game for the season after missing several weeks due to mental health reasons, which he opened up about before his return.
He then suffered a concussion against West Coast in round five, with Sunday's game the first time for the year he and Charlie Curnow have played a full game together.
"You go on a journey with every single one of your players, and everyone has a really different one," said Voss.
"I always believe as a coach, you've got to believe in your people, and that's so important to do; to believe in them. And when they're going through tough times, you've got to keep showing them the way.
"And he's been able to work through some things, and I don't want to overplay this ... but I'm just so pleased he's able to come back. He's a critically important person to us. We love him in our team."
Voss also commended his defenders, including new recruit Nick Haynes, who stood up at key times in the match.
"We just had great moments ... Haynes, he had a number of them throughout the game. So he certainly turned the clock back there a little bit.
"I thought 'Gove' (Mitch McGovern) had some really big moments, 50-50 balls, where he was able to win the ball from tough situations.
"Weiters' (Jacob Weitering) tackle on Dangerfield late in the game - tackles do win you matches.
"But I think overall, the most probably pleasing team aspect of it all was that we've kept a very strong offensive team to a low score."
The Blues will be without veteran Zac Williams for an unknown period, with the small forward subbed out from the game in the first quarter with a calf injury.
Voss couldn't comment as to the extent of the injury, but reiterated the importance of Williams to their forward line.
"I spoke to him in the rooms afterwards," said Voss.
"Hopefully we're missing him just for a couple of weeks, but I don't know the scale of it yet, so I guess it's a bit of a wait and see.
"He's a pretty important player to our make-up of our forward line."
For Geelong, coach Chris Scott said that the loss was one of the worst performances he had seen from his team in some time, saying he was mainly disappointed with his side's skill execution and unforced errors.
"That's as bad as I've seen us play for a long time," he said.
"There was a combination of things that added up to a lot. But again, sometimes you have those days and you hope they're rare.
"I thought we'd hung in and we gave ourselves the chance to win, but every time it looked like drawing level we'd make another error.
"I just didn't think we were able to execute well enough. Sorry it's so vanilla. I'd like to give you a little bit more but sometimes that's the right answer even though it's boring."
Five-time All Australian Tom Stewart seemed to have injured himself in the first quarter when he hobbled from a tackle, but played out the remainder of the game.
"It was a contact thing," Scott said.
"Structurally okay, but bloody sore. He was limited but I think you know us well enough to know that gun players, we're not putting them out there if we thought we were going to put next week at risk."
