The Blues weighed up whether to bring in an extra tall defender to counter the Cats' three-tall attack, which had performed impressively in a big win against Port Adelaide last round, but decided against it.

They also debated whether to keep their three skilful but lightweight forwards - Jeff Garlett, Eddie Betts and Chris Yarran - in the side against the tough, big-bodied Geelong outfit.

They did, and were rewarded at both ends of the ground.

Geelong's three big forwards - Cameron Mooney, Tom Hawkins and James Podsiadly - failed to fire, scoring just 1.4 between them, as the likes of Andrew Walker, Bryce Gibbs and Jordan Russell provided enormous run from defence.

In Carlton's attack, the pace and skill of Garlett, Betts and Yarran had a big impact, with 7.2 between them.

Those decisions contributed to the Blues looking much quicker than the Cats.

"Sometimes coaches roll the dice when playing smaller players on taller players and you can be in a world of pain if they start catching it, or you actually create the opportunity to run and counter-attack," Ratten said.

"So it's a flip of the coin ... sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, today we got an advantage from it." Cats coach Mark Thompson said his attack might have performed better had it received better midfield service and that Carlton's ascendancy through the centre of the ground also made life harder for Geelong's defence.

Ratten said there had been a major emphasis on denying opportunities for the Cats to move into attack by having Blues defenders press up into the midfield.

"Geelong are a great team and we saw firsthand (against Port Adelaide) last week what they can do to the opposition," he said.

"We thought if we could pressure Geelong, we could maybe get the ball back a few more times ... they usually out-possess their opposition by a fair bit and today we got our hands on the ball first." Captain Chris Judd led the way in the ball-winning department, with 15 contested possessions, with fellow midfielders Heath Scotland, Kade Simpson and Andrew Carrazzo also influential.

The Blues will have to make at least one change for next Sunday's bumper MCG clash with in-form Collingwood, after Walker injured his collarbone late in Monday's match, with Paul Bower his likely replacement.

But after making a statement by dropping respected tall defenders Jarrad Waite and Bret Thornton and bringing in Garlett ahead of last weekend's win over Adelaide, Ratten said the Blues would also have to decide whether their unconventional structure could continually work.

"(Opposition teams) will go through us as a team and really dissect the different structure that we've got," he said.

"The challenge for the playing group and the coaches will be to replicate that or change certain parts of our game.

"We don't want to become extremely predictable, sometimes being predictable creates consistency ... but we want to keep the opposition guessing." But Ratten said the most important element was to maintain their intensity of the past two rounds, particularly their tackling.

"Our tackling today was first-class and watching Collingwood-Essendon yesterday, their tackling was A-grade as well, so it will be a great game."

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