Despite a disappointing start to the season, the vibe at IKON Park remains in great stead.

1-4 through five, the Blues are far from where they’d like to be, sitting in 16th place despite a major off-season shift.

With pressure on coach Michael Voss continuing to mount, the playing group aren’t panicking, and ahead of a crucial Thursday night clash with old enemies Collingwood, veteran defender Nic Newman has ensured that their slow start won’t drop their heads this early into the season.

“It’s been good,” Newman told SEN’s The Run Home.

“Obviously, we don’t want to be 1-4, but we’ve done a pretty good job in terms of the playing group and coaches keeping the vibe up.

“The thing about the game we play is that four, five, six days later, we’ve got another game, so we can’t sit there and dwell on what could have been.

“Narrative around ‘we could have been 2-3 or 3-2’… the reality is, we’re not, and the game moves too quick. We’ve had to move on pretty quickly from losses, and the vibes been good.

“Vossy does a great job of making sure we come in and treat every week the same, win loss or draw. We feel like we’ve played some good footy, and I think that’s also helping.

“I know that’s not what people want to hear, but we don’t feel like we’re far off. We feel like we’re doing a lot right, we just have little patches in games that we’re probably letting the oppo score a little too much. We feel like if we can tighten that up, some results will come our way.

“It’s pretty hard not to have a good vibe and atmosphere when you’re playing the Pies on Thursday night in front of 80-85,000.”

Carlton’s start to the season has been a similar tale to that of recent years; start hot, fade out late.

Within every game this season, the Blues have taken a lead into quarter time, and in four of their five games, Carlton has led at the main change.

However, as has been well documented, the second half has proved a real challenge, failing to win a single second half this season.

Newman believes there are multiple factors that come into play within the latter stages that cause the side’s crumble, with a constant body of work being done to rectify the problem.

“It’s varied from game to game,” said Newman.

“There’s a mindset element in terms of trying to keep winning in the game and being proactive. I think at times, we’ve been a little too safe, especially with ball-in-hand.

“There’s some structure things as well, where we might be losing contest or our method around contest.

“There’s a few little tweaks, but we’ve led for large periods of games, we’ve started games really well, so there are some real positives in the way we’re playing.

“We feel like if we can just tighten those runs up and keep teams kicking two or three goals instead of four, five or six, that could be the difference.

“We’re doing some work on it; it’s one of those things where you do work on it and you don’t necessarily get a change straight away, sometimes there’s a bit of a lag effect.

“We feel like last week against a team that finished on top of the ladder last year at their home deck, we played some really good footy. As I said, it’s just a four- or five-minute patch.

“We’ve done a bit of work on it, and hopefully we can see it come to fruition tonight.”

Two of the Blues’ key pillars is returning to face the Pies, with Jacob Weitering and young gun Harry Dean both selected having exited concussion protocols.

Dean, taken with a matched bid at Pick 3 in the 2025 National Draft, has displayed some great signs in the infancy of his career, with Newman pointing to his combative nature and what it adds to the unity of the side.

“There’s always guys that come in that you like, but there’s certain guys that you just love the way they go about it. He is one of them,” he said.

“He’s just so competitive. For an 18-year-old kid, he’s on the ping pong table, losing his marbles when he gets done! He’s so competitive, which you just love, and he’s combative, he goes about it the right way.

“You see him standing up for himself with Tom Lynch against the Tiges, he doesn’t mind a bit of a biff.

“He’s got that old school footballer about it, and as an older player, you just love seeing a kid come in and be so competitive in his want to win.

“Some of his desperate acts are pretty endearing not only as players but to Carlton fans, and AFL supporters can see that in him.”

Newman and the Blues host the old enemy tonight from 7:30pm AEST.

Blues Radio is back for the blockbuster clash. Join Andy Maher, Sam Edmund, Anthony Koutoufides and Ang Christou on SEN from 7pm AEST.

Listen to the full interview below: