CARLTON has missed out on September for the ninth consecutive season despite winning eight of the first 10 games, but Blues coach Michael Voss doesn't see the fadeout as a failure.
The Blues looked destined to return to the finals for the first time since 2013 after making a brilliant start to the campaign under the new coach, but will spend the summer analysing what went wrong on the run home, when they lost six of their final eight games.
BLUES v PIES Full match coverage and stats
After recovering from 19 points down at half-time on Sunday to lead Collingwood by 24 points at three-quarter time, the Blues were beaten in the dying minutes by Craig McRae's side, which prevailed by a point to ensure the Western Bulldogs finished in eighth spot instead of Carlton.
"I don't tend to look at it (as a failure). It (2022) is a massive step forward. There will be a time when we sit down through the week and unpack the whole season and what it looked like, but we had a goal to create a transformation here and we've gone a long way to be able to do that," Voss said on Sunday night.
"We also know where we are and that is we have to get better. We've shown that we are somewhere about seventh to 10th but that's not where we want to be; we want to be better than that.
"We've got to get back to work and that might end up meaning that we've got to look at our profile and how we play, our style of footy and how we sustain our intensity for longer periods of time. There will be some change in that.
"The reality is we're not here just to make finals; we're here to be a top-four footy club and we sustainably want to be great. We've fallen short of that mark. We've got to get back to work and we will. We'll review it really hard and reflect; we'll take the great moments out of it, but we've got to get better."
Carlton needed to win only one of its final four games but four consecutive losses to Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne – with only 11 seconds remaining on the clock – and now Collingwood will ensure it will be a summer of reflection at Princes Park.
"This thing was on our boot. We had a month to get it right and we didn't. You get what you deserve in this game," Voss said.
"The reality is we put ourselves in a great position and we didn't finish it. We played against some quality opposition to finish off the year. Some quality opposition and we went toe-to-toe with them, but the toe-to-toe didn't get us over the line unfortunately.
"There is something there with this group. For Carlton fans and supporters, there is some promise there and hopefully we've given them a little bit of belief about what we're going to be about going forward."
Voss said star midfielder Sam Walsh wasn't close to playing against Collingwood after being withdrawn an hour before the first bounce due to back soreness.
"He wasn't really that close. He pulled up really sore. He got through last week's game pretty sore and he just couldn't get going yesterday," he said.
"The call was made that it wasn't even worth trying. He would have been right in a couple of weeks, but he fell short for this one."
Collingwood coach McRae couldn't believe the outcome less than 20 minutes after the final siren, with the Magpies winning a ninth game by single digits in the space of three months to finish the home and away season in the top four with a percentage of just 104.3 per cent – the 10th best in the AFL this year.
"This is a unique thing," McRae said in his post-match press conference.
"The history of the game says that; no-one has won as many close games in the history of the game as what we've been able to do this year, it's been quite remarkable, really.
"At some stage we'll sit back and reflect and just admire what we've done in this space."
Collingwood teenager Jack Ginnivan recovered from the hamstring issue that forced him to sit out the second half of last Sunday's loss to Sydney at the SCG, kicking three crucial goals in key moments to continue his breakout season that has generated as many headlines as any other player in the game in 2022.
McRae was thrilled with the 19-year-old's professionalism in a challenging week when he was cleared of a hamstring strain on Monday but wasn't given the tick to face the Blues until Friday afternoon.
"I was really proud of him," he said.
"I put it on him; I talked to the fact that he was a chance not to play. As a professional athlete in that space, you just know the challenges when you're not sure if your body is right. He had been thinking, is my body going to be right to get through this?
"It has been a week that he's never had. He got himself available through all the work that he did to get himself up to play. It's one thing to get up to play, it's another to do your job and do it well. He's a 19-year-old kid that did it really well."
Collingwood will now face Geelong in a fortnight at the MCG, while Carlton will be forced to watch on from afar again.
