Michael Voss says he and his staff have been “bullied” over Carlton’s handling of Elijah Hollands, with the Blues coach lashing out at public criticism of the club.

Speaking publicly for the first time since the immediate aftermath of last Thursday’s game against Collingwood, which saw Hollands experience a mental health episode on-field, Voss defended the club and stressed the player’s challenges must be private rather than public.

Hollands was this week admitted to hospital in the aftermath of last week’s match, which has the club and WorkSafe Victoria investigating the circumstances around their handling of the player.

Voss urged the public to show patience with the process and respect the privacy of all involved.

“We’ve unfortunately… rather than making this a private challenge, we’ve made this a public event,” Voss said at a press conference on Thursday.

“The commentary, the conversation, the ball-by-ball play… we’ve unfortunately made it that.

“In some ways – I’ll be really honest – it’s felt like bordering on bullying.

“When you start to think about then that as a concept about our people, that’s really important. That’s who I care about the most.

“So rather than show compassion and empathy through a really difficult situation, we are being really judgmental, with knowing little facts, without understanding history and background, and we’ve drawn our own outcomes. And we can’t judge that in a binary way.

“It’s complex. It’s situational.”

When asked to expand on his comment around bullying, Voss said: “I think our people have been bullied. And we bully for outcomes.

“We need to take into consideration the people involved in this.

“This impacts families. It affects a lot of people.”

Voss said the investigation was “not about speed” and said it was likely there would be “some findings out the back of it.”

The coach said he had been in communication with the Hollands family over the past few days, rather than the player himself, saying it was “important we keep the distance and space right now”.

Voss stressed the club had provided the appropriate level of support, care, love, empathy and accountability toward Hollands over several years as the 23-year-old dealt with a range of issues.

“The last couple of years haven’t been smooth sailing for him or us,” Voss said.

“But what we have done, and our team of people have done, is provided amazing mentoring, counselling, guidance, specialists and professionals both inside and out, all for the opportunity for a young man to be able to have a career.

“And all through the discussions that I’ve had with Lij… has been very little to do with football, and everything to do about life.”

Voss said one thing that could not be in question was the level of care the club had shown towards the 47-gamer.

“You just cannot possibly come to the conclusion that it is about care,” he said.

“We accept that we need to look at process, and that process will show itself over whatever time it needs to be. But there is that care.”

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