COACH Brendon Bolton has spoken honestly about Carlton’s 19-point loss against the Swans in Round 3.

The Blues once again showed great patches of play in their hard-fought contest against Sydney, but an inability to play consistently until the final siren was ultimately the difference.

Bolton was adamant that this loss won’t be treated lightly by the entire group.

“Close enough is not good enough,” said Bolton following the game

“I don’t want to blur that all with their absolute inner drive from everyone at our club. Coaches, administrators and players. There’s a heap of belief. There’s a lot of strong belief but not accepting close losses. That’s three now.

“We talk about what happened and why. There’s lots of moments in games.

“The AFL competition is so even that little things add up, because we’re looking for a big issue all the time. The game is an accumulation of lots of things done well consistently enough. That’s why you hear all coaches, the best of them.”

Individually, there were a number of performances for Blues’ supporters to be proud of, particularly that of defender Liam Jones.

Jones was given the massive job of manning up against Lance Franklin who has historically enjoyed his outings against the Blues.

While things looked to be going Franklin’s way early in the game after he booted two goals in the first half, Jones fought back strongly to completely negate the star forward’s impact on the game keeping him goalless in the second half.

Bolton spoke positively about Jones’ impact, believing it was testament to the hard work Jones had put in right throughout the pre-season.

“I thought Liam was fantastic,” said Bolton

“A fantastic one-on-one and I’m sure the crowd who were here today would have enjoyed that contest. It was a bit like the old days, a fair few more one on ones.”

“I think his confidence doesn’t get built over just this one game. Jones’ game today is an accumulation of pre-season, JLT and his first two rounds.

“He and Weitering have been really strong back there. You can’t just got and perform like he did today on the back of just wanting to.”

Carlton will now shift their attention to next week’s game against the Gold Coast Suns at Metricon Stadium.