Collingwood captain Nick Maxwell cited Carlton’s dominance at the contested ball as the key indicator of the difference between the two sides on Friday night.

“I think that the first 15-20 minutes they were up about 20 in contested possession and that’s just an outrageous number to be up in 15-20 minutes of footy,” Maxwell told CTV after the match.

“We had everyone available at that stage and they just out-hunted us and were too good for us in tight so we have to pick up our contested footy.”

“I thought that their inner and outer balance was a lot better than ours as well, so that’s guys with their nose in the trough and guys on the outside who play the running roles.”

“I just thought their balance was a lot better than us as well.”

The skipper, who accumulated 13 disposals and five marks on return from an ankle injury, put the onus on the club’s leaders to ensure that the team returned to its lofty standards of recent years.

“It was extremely disappointing. From us, the buck stops with the leaders and the senior players and we didn’t get the job done so we’ll have a good hard look at it all over the next two or three days and regroup for Port Adelaide,” declared Maxwell.

“We came up against a team who’s a definite top four team and they outplayed us across the board so it’s disappointing.

“I’m glad that it happened in round three and not later on in the year so we’ve got a lot of time to look at it and really analyse our performance and have a good hard look at each other and ourselves and look where we went wrong and what we have to improve on.”

The 28-year-old said that the cold hard stats underlined coach Nathan Buckley’s post-game message.

“He basically just showed us the numbers, and that’s enough said. He just said individually everyone has to have a good hard look at themselves but it comes back to the leaders and the senior players.

“We’re the ones who have to lead the way and we’re the ones who have to get everyone going, and as I said, I’m happy it happened in round three and we can analyse and have a good hard look at it.

“We’ll turn it around, I’m very confident we’ll turn it around. Guys haven’t lost their ability overnight, we just got outplayed by a better team tonight and we’ll be back better than ever next week.”

Maxwell also threw his weight behind fellow defender Lachlan Keeffe who played arguably the best match of his short career on several of Carlton’s dangerous key forwards.

“He’s been thrown in some big roles in the first three weeks of the season and he’s really stood up for us and for someone who’s still learning the game, he hasn’t been playing footy for that long, I think it was a real positive and a shining light for us.

“When Ben Reid went down he had to play on guys like Jarrad Waite and Shaun Hampson who are so good in the air and I thought he really stood up for us, so I thought he was a real positive.”