Wood will miss Mick but Blues must play

CARLTON’S Cameron Wood has revealed he and teammate Dale Thomas agreed the best way to honour sacked coach and mentor Mick Malthouse was to get back to business as soon as possible.

Wood and Thomas had links with Malthouse from their time at Collingwood, and the AFL’s coaching games record-holder helped Wood two years ago when he recruited him out of the VFL wilderness.

While acknowledging Malthouse’s impact, Wood, 28, said the Carlton players had united around caretaker coach John Barker.

“Daisy (Thomas) and I had a chat about it and we realised there’s not much point moping about it because we’ve got a game to play,” Wood said yesterday.

“We went up to Sydney and tried our best. That’s the best thing about footy – there is a game every week.

“Mick was really good for the club and for the game. I guess it is time to celebrate that. We have left that behind now and are looking forward to Adelaide this week (Round 10).”

Wood, who sent Malthouse a text message after his sacking, said the players now had to prove their longterm worth.

“I guess when the coach gets sacked, you start to wonder about yourself, and hopefully that will make us play better,” he said.

“JB (Barker) has come in and made a pretty big point that we are not going to waste the next 13 or 14 weeks.

“At the moment, it is about absorbing effort and making it as competitive as possible.”

Wood and Levi Casboult are ambassadors for the Jodi Lee Foundation, which raises awareness of bowel cancer.

Carlton’s clash with Adelaide at the MCG on Saturday will aid the foundation and promote early detection.

Casboult’s uncle was diagnosed last year and is recovering.

“Thankfully it’s a good news story for us, but anything I can do to help, I love to get involved,” he said.

Casboult is confident his wayward goalkicking days are behind him after simplifying his technique since April under part time goalkicking coach Sav Rocca.

Casboult has been pleased with his progress in recent weeks, and kicked 2.0 against Sydney last week.

“A lot of it is my technique not being 100 per cent, so I’m trying to fix that at training,’’ he said. ‘‘It’s just about repetition so in a game I don’t go back to my bad technique.”