The Lions and Magpies are both desperately vying for fourth place and are separated by percentage only, and Voss said the match would test where his team was really at.
While refusing to acknowledge the Lions (11-6) have wrapped up their finals berth until notching their 12th win, he was pleased to chalk up the win against the Kangaroos.
‘’ We’re four points away (from finals),’’ he said.
‘’Doesn’t this game become critical. When you’re playing against a side that’s on the same points as you and fighting for the same spot, takes on a whole new meaning.
‘’We go to the MCG and play in front of a pretty good crowd and this becomes a really crunch game for us and tests us a bit with what our form is like currently and whether it stacks up.’’
And the Lions coach was pleased with how the form stacked up on Saturday night.
With captain Jonathan Brown kicking eight goals and overcoming the loss of fellow spearhead Daniel Bradshaw (hamstring), Voss said the Lions had learned to look elsewhere in their forward line.
‘’For him to be able to kick the goals he did was pretty important to us, (but) we had to try and get some other guys to join in too,’’ he said.
‘’We’ve got to have other players up there that can join in so we’re not so centrally focussed. I thought we had a pretty reasonable balance as the game went on.
‘’We started a little bit on our heels but after that we built into the game. Across the game I would have thought was pretty consistent.’’
While saving praise for tireless ruckman Mitch Clark and third-gamer Jack Redden, who kicked two goals, Voss said the Lions still had to learn to control the tempo of the game.
‘’When it’s slow, we play slow, when it’s fast we play fast, when it’s frantic, we play frantic.
"We probably have to get a bit of control about how we want to play a bit more rather than let the opposition determine how the style of game should be played.
‘’That’s perhaps where our stage of development is. Whereas Geelong and St Kilda make you play their style, they make you play that real, contested, hard football and that’s something I think we’re till evolving as a group.’’
