WE’RE halfway through a chat when Michael Voss gets within earshot of Josh Carr, who is speaking about the midfield setup at Port Adelaide.

Carr takes a moment’s break as Voss’s hears his name being mentioned..

“I’m just talking about your love for me and my love for you,’’ he tells Voss, as tongue-in-cheek as you can be. Then he continues to address the matter at hand.

But he acknowledges that Carr and Voss working together as Power assistant coaches is one of football’s great ironies: they were the fiercest of opponents during one of football’s great rivalries a decade ago and now they are working alongside each other shaping Port Adelaide’s midfield.

Voss saw the comedy of the situation as soon as he signed to join the Power.

“I never thought I’d be working right alongside Josh Carr,’’ Voss said after arriving at Alberton late last year. ``The closest we got together was normally in a headlock.’’

They have now worked together for a summer, and Carr could not speak more highly of the colleague he used to act like he detested.

Michael Voss charged with developing Port Adelaide’s midfield. Picture: Calum Robertson Source: News Corp Australia

The reality is that they were just two enormously competitive beasts. Voss was Brisbane’s blue-chip player and Carr, a get-under-your-skin tagger, was assigned by then-coach Mark Williams to not only restrict him but to find his own ball.

The contests between them could not have been more explosive.

Carr rarely wasted time letting Voss know what he had planned for the afternoon when the Power played the Lions.

“When I went into games I had a job and mine was to stop Vossy as well as getting the ball myself,’’ Carr recalled. ``The way I played my game, I probably let him know pretty quickly.

“But the way Vossy was like, nothing worried him too much.’’

As fiercely as they fought, a growing measure of respect developed between the pair.

They were similar in more ways than one: neither would ever back away from a scrap, but neither was one to carry a grudge and mull over their fights.

“I think we’re pretty similar and moved on pretty quickly,’’ Carr said. ``We’re both not the type of guys who’d sit around and worry about what happened in a game.

“We’re both competitive people who want to win in everything we do and that’s how it was.’’

Carr is not surprised they work well together now.

Josh Carr at Alberton Oval. Picture: Tom Huntley Source: News Corp Australia

Port’s coaching panel, like most, have rivals from a range of clubs: Ken Hinkley from Geelong, Matthew Nicks from Sydney, Tyson Edwards from the Crows, Voss and Shaun Hart from Brisbane and Carr from the Power are only a sample.

“I’ve met a lot of people in football and once you get off the white line, most people in football are good people,’’ Carr said. ``Bad persons in a football environment get weeded out so I’m not surprised we get along.

“But I suppose it was sort of funny when it was announced (that Voss was joining Power). We used the belt the shit out of each other and now we coach alongside one another.

“But we’re really respectful of each other and really enjoying it so far.’’

With Voss out of earshot, Carr could not speak more highly of Voss. You just get the feeling that he’d be too competitive to call Voss the ultimate opponent with the Brisbane triple premiership captain and Brownlow Medallist still in the room.

“He’s by far the best player I ever played on,’’ Carr said. ``He could mark the ball, go forward and was tough inside.

``He was the hardest player to stop.

``We had some good battles. He won some; I got up in a couple.’’

Port Adelaide has invested heavily in the midfield this year. Voss has arrived, and former defender Jacob Surjan helps out as a development coach in the area.

Carr explained how it will work.

“He (Voss) is the midfield manager so he manages the whole program and how we go about it,’’ Carr said. ``Jacob Surjan is a development coach and my role is about the stoppages and mainly the inside structures.’’