“(Coach) Terry Wallace was very disappointed and said he felt it was a missed opportunity,” Howat told richmondfc.com.au. “We’re very disappointed. We’d set ourselves for this and knew Carlton had had a big pre-season, winning the NAB Cup and everything. But we thought we had a chance and at 27 points up early in the third quarter, you would have thought we could close it out from there. But unfortunately they ran over the top of us.”
Wallace was calm after the match, talking his players through some statistics and pointing out where he thought they could improve. He also opened discussion and the players pinpointed how and why they felt they had let the match slip in the second half.
Howat said he was happy with his own form in the first half but had been frustrated after half-time, working just as hard but unable to get his hands on the footy; a feeling he felt many of his teammates had shared.
“Once we kicked a couple of early goals, after half-time, I think we might have thought it was going to just happen,” the recently elevated ex-rookie said. “We maybe tried to get some easy footy, and that’s not what got us in the lead.
“They (Carlton) killed us in loose balls and stoppages after half-time,” he added. “They shared it around and we just couldn’t go with them. It was an evenly-matched first quarter and then we got on top and were playing the way we wanted to play. We were very confident at half-time but we couldn’t finish them off.”
Howat said he did not believe fitness was the reason Carlton finished the stronger. “We feel that we have done the work over summer. But we changed what we were doing, like coming through the middle. We probably tried to save the match a little too much, holding onto the footy and going wide. We couldn’t get the drive we needed.”
