Carlton coach David Teague is focusing on improvement in the final three games of the home and away season.
The Blues missed another great opportunity to move closer to the top eight when they went down to GWS by nine points on Thursday night in a game where they led by 15 points at three-quarter time.
The Giants helped themselves to four last-quarter goals while restricting Carlton to none, denying Teague’s side victory despite the Blues leading for large portions of the contest - a very similar result to last weekend’s loss to Collingwood.
With three games remaining, the Blues require three wins while relying on those sides above them to falter in order to play finals footy, but Teague is only focused on one thing.
Asked if the season was over in terms of finals hopes, Teague told reporters post-match: “You’d have to have a look at it mathematically but it’s not over for us.
“We’ve got three more games to get better and see what happens. Every game is important for us to improve, and that’s our focus to get better.
“I thought there were signs that we did get better in areas today. Unfortunately again we didn’t do it for four quarters.
“We’ve got 12 quarters, at least, to go and we need to show we can play good footy for four quarters.”
It felt like another missed opportunity for the Blues who now find themselves in 12th position with 24 points, some eight points and percentage behind the eighth-placed Giants.
“Take the season out, it was a missed opportunity, we didn’t play for four quarters,” Teague added.
“That’s our job. We go out there to play for four quarters and put the effort and make the right decisions and right now we’re not there.
“We’re probably sitting where we should sit because our ability to do it for four quarters (is not there). What we do have is belief we can do it.
“We’ve showed we can do it for periods of games, so it gives us belief, but we’ve got to be able to do it and the simple fact is we’re not doing it for four quarters right now.
“We’ve got to find a way to do that.”
Carlton will look to play out all four quarters when they next meet Sydney at Metricon Stadium next Tuesday night.
They take on Adelaide and Brisbane after that and require a minor miracle if they want to experience finals action for the first time since 2013.