Carlton coach Brett Ratten has admitted he didn't see the Hawks' first-quarter ambush coming and had no inkling that his players were not switched-on from the start of Saturday night's NAB Cup quarter-final at Telstra Dome.
The game was effectively over at quarter-time when Hawthorn had 2.6.3 (58) on the board to Carlton's three behinds. The Hawks extended their lead to 72 points in the second term before cruising to the line by 34 points.
"When you have the first five clearances of the game and they score four goals you think, 'yeah, we're not switched on too much'," Ratten told his post-match media conference.
"That was the start of it and they got their tail up and away they went and they were pretty hard to stop."
Ratten said the Blues didn't help themselves early with skill errors and by overdoing the handball.
"Some of our handball hit the ground tonight and I was pretty disappointed with that," he said.
"It created overuse handball; one hits the ground and the next bloke's got to pick it up and it goes on and on and you're not going in the direction you'd like to go.
"That's an area we need to improve on. We haven't been too bad at that skill but tonight we really let ourselves down with that.
Ratten said he saw no reason to re-cast his inexperienced back six which included second-year prospects Shaun Grigg, Mark Austin and Michael Jamison, despite the early onslaught.
"With Mark Austin and Grigg and (Paul) Bower, they need to go through, 'this is AFL football' and how do you get experience if you don’t play," he said.
"Some of the good things that happen in games they can be a part of and the not so good they have to scrap and fight."
Ratten denied that throwing Jarrad Waite forward in the second half was an indication that he's not prepared to persevere with him in defence.
He said that with Lance Franklin rested for much of the second half there was simply no ideal match-up for Waite.
"It was a bit of a reprieve to let him just go and play and we though we might have had some players to cover some of their forwards, but we just let him off the leash to go down forward and have a bit of freedom and try and kick a goal," Ratten said.
Ratten credited forward line pressure for bringing the Blues back into the contest.
"We got the ball locked in and stopped their counter-attack, that was the difference," he said.
"Early on it was going in and waltzing clean out of there. We got the ball in there for a little bit longer and that gave us the opportunity to score."