Carlton coach Michael Voss says he needs Tom De Koning forward and there’s nothing sinister behind his move

The drums are beating loudly that Carlton big man Tom De Koning will take a monster deal at St Kilda, but that’s not why he’s not playing in the ruck for the Blues.

Carlton coach Michael Voss insists the way he has been using big man Tom De Koning is not a public concession the club was resigned to losing the out-of-contract star to St Kilda.

De Koning copped the Bronx cheers, and even some boos, from Carlton fans when he took his first mark seconds before three-quarter time during their 37-point loss to the Brisbane Lions at Marvel Stadium on Thursday night.

Having stamped himself as one of the most influential ruckmen in the league in the first half of the season, De Koning has been stationed up forward for most of his last four games.

In that time he’s only managed one goal, while his understudy Marc Pittonet has taken on the bulk of the ruck duties.

But Voss dismissed any suggestion that playing De Koning out of position so regularly was punishment for deciding to join the Saints.

Instead, Voss said that was a long bow to draw as De Koning’s move to Moorabbin remains firmly in the realm of speculation for now.

“It’s pretty black and white for us … we need a role filled forward of the ball at the moment,” Voss said.

Tom De Koning copped some Bronx cheers. Picture: Robert Cianflone/Getty Images

“We’re challenged with some talls right now and ‘Pitto’ is in great form, so he deserves to be in the team.

“We need some tall timber forward of the ball that can draw the footy.

“You don’t need to read into it too much more than that.”

But Voss remained hopeful he would resist the Saints’ big-money overtures.

“Tom is a very important person to us and he’s grown at this football club,” Voss said.

“We’d love to see him see out his career here and we’re really hoping that that’s the case.”

In an all-too-familiar tale for the Blues, their skill errors and inefficiency conspired against them in going down to Brisbane.

“Every time we felt like in the first half that there was maybe a window or a little opportunity where we could peg back the scoreboard, it was sort of taken off us,” Voss said.

Carlton might’ve shown some slight improvement against Brisbane, compared to their three previous train wreck performances against North Melbourne, Port Adelaide and Collingwood, but Voss said his team simply was “still not good enough”.

“We want to value how we defend and appreciating that we’ve played against two really good offensive teams (Collingwood and Brisbane), but there’s still things in our control that we can do a hell of a lot better and we’re not quite at that level yet,” he said.

Carlton coach Michael Voss remains hopeful De Koning will stay. Picture: Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images

The Blues coach also conceded that their chronic substandard ball use may create the impression that they didn’t focus enough of on improving their skills over the summer heading into this season.

“We have to take notice of that,” he said.

“But in terms of what we actually did focus on throughout the pre-season, we spent a fair bit of time on it.

“It was a key part of the way we wanted to be able to change slightly the way we wanted to play in our game style.”

Originally published as Carlton coach Michael Voss says he needs Tom De Koning forward and there’s nothing sinister behind his move