List management and midfield woes exposed in loss to Geelong Cats

In their defeat to Brisbane just a few weeks ago, Collingwood were without their previous captain, current captain and future captain: Scott Pendlebury, Darcy Moore and Nick Daicos. This loss can be explained. This he failed to achieve against the other grand finalist.

There should have been little difference between the two teams. There was no, it was a gulf.

In part this was an abyss of their own making, due to poor goal kicking, excessive midfielding and defensive breakdown. And in part this was due to the comparative difference between young talent and roster construction.

Collingwood wanted to emulate Geelong in defying gravity to keep their slate a viable premiership contender. The gap between aspiration and reality was graphically exposed on Saturday night by the team the Magpies want to be.

This looked like a club that had made a preliminary final last year and stuck with the idea of ​​playing the final rather than winning the flag.

Collingwood’s results reach an unconvincing conclusion. They beat Carlton (but gave them a reprieve due to a missed shot after the siren) and besieged Essendon; Both teams finished in the last three. They beat St Kilda and GWS, both below them in the table, and drew with Hawthorn in a game the statistics strongly pointed towards them losing.

They were upset by last year’s premiers Brisbane, lost to Adelaide, woefully failed against Fremantle and were beaten by Geelong this weekend.

The obvious point of Saturday night’s game was that Oisin Mullin had a good night, blunting the impact of Nick Daicos. Daicos has had some say in this regard, uncharacteristically (not in the last three weeks but throughout his career) keeping his feet loose on the ball and missing shots on target.

Moore was injured after leading with his head. Pendlebury was serviceable but not dominant. It led to further debate about how and when it was used and whether marketing decisions came before football decisions. Criticisms that his soon-to-be record-breaking play has overshadowed his football decisions are clear.

Pendlebury is 38 years old. You wouldn’t normally schedule travel breaks for him five or six days a week. We assume that when he comes on the field he will play at the same level in every match, but players his age do not. Pendlebury’s recent hamstring injury and Paddy Dangerfield’s outstanding preliminary final and poor grand final a week later are evidence of the case against being told that veterans can be benched on a weekly basis, especially on short breaks.

The broader question is why a 38-year-old player is still so important to this team. Where are the other players claiming his place?

The Magpies have two generations of players in their team; Baton torch transfer between Pendlebury and Nick Daicos in midfield. They have no other young stars to shoulder this burden.

Unlike when Pendlebury was drafted, which was before some of his teammates were even born, Collingwood has built a team around him with young, elite talent. Daisy Thomas, Steele Sidebottom, Travis Cloke, Ben Reid and Nathan Brown were a generation of elite players selected in a tight window.

Without wanting to tread old ground involving the Pies, unwise roster management decisions (almost always involving the always risky idea of ​​trading away current and/or future first-round picks) have left them without the kind of young players Pendlebury enjoys around Daicos.

The club has said that from now on, they want to preserve their early draft picks and enter the draft earlier if possible, use free agency and only trade for players with later draft picks. This is an overdue but correct approach and should correct the club’s misguided approach, summed up by coach Craig McRae’s “show me you don’t pick players” comment.

Essendon have scored more goals than Collingwood this year. Collingwood defended like Essendon on Saturday night.

The Bombers aren’t the type of team many teams would try to emulate.

The defensive system that collapsed on Saturday night has been an aspect of the game that has kept the Magpies in the competition all year long, even if they were unable to score at the other end.

Collingwood’s problems spanned every phase of the game and area of ​​the pitch, but the most troublesome was the midfield. A bad shot on goal will kill you, but it’s not as bad as the opponent giving you a four-goal lead from mid-range. Collingwood had at times fielded its starting midfield with the 2023 flag (Darcy Cameron, Pendlebury, Daicos and Jordy De Goey) and still got beaten.

Although a few men struggled to defend one-on-one when necessary, the normally well-formed defense was left without Moore in the second half. Even if Moore didn’t play very well, it was a structural problem for them. Harry Perryman’s absence was, without exaggeration, an absence.

Their forward line had plenty of opportunities from the forward 50 but wasted any sense of momentum with poor kicking from many offenders.

All parts of the game activate transformation. Strike pathetically for goal as Collingwood did – six successive shots in the third quarter, including set-piece shots from easy range, hitting the post and not clearing the 50 – and you help your opponent exploit your weaknesses.

Give your opponent too many chances to try their shots and they will fine-tune it like Geelong did. Geelong’s freedom to move the ball end-to-end and score was in stark contrast to Collingwood’s unadventurous, hard-hitting ball movement.

Collingwood still have very good players and a very good coach, they can and will play better than this, but two games against the two grand finalists have provided the most serious and accurate assessment of where they are at.

A Tale of Two McKays

They are the brothers who bind Essendon and Carlton together in seasons of discontent. Harry was angry about the goals he didn’t score, Ben was angry about the goals he couldn’t stop.

They are their own people but throughout their careers both twins have been confidence players.

This tour was a tale of two McKay brothers. Ben was dropped and Essendon performed better. One may not have caused the other, but two things did occur. The way Ben has been playing lately to relieve the pressure has probably been smart.

The same could be said for Harry, with his growing disillusionment with everyone and everything at Carlton lately. Bigger names carry a heavier burden in terms of performance and that burden appeared to be weighing heavily on Harry, who currently “can’t draw you a football” in the club vernacular. Then Harry went out and painted a beautiful picture.

In the second half, McKay was the most authoritative name on the field. It was clearly his best match this year; Most points (10), most hits (21), most goals (3) in a match. But it wasn’t about the statistics, it was about how he excelled and who he played with. This was against Brisbane and Harris was playing against Andrews and he was dominant.

Ruck adjustment required

Get him into the pile on the first bounce and you set the tone for the team.

Coaches have long pleaded with themselves whether the first contest of match play in combat sports emboldens or deflates entire teams. They begged to jump powerfully into their backpacks.

The new ruck rule has a lot to recommend it, but it needs adjusting.

At the moment there is more incentive to run and shy away from diving into the pile than to jump into the other pile and let the other loose man run over the halfway line for the free kick – assuming they don’t get their hands on the ball, as is often the case.

The person who chooses not to jump should not be rewarded for not jumping. A tramp who chooses not to jump must waive that right.

The return to the bouncing ruckman was a welcome change from the new ruck rule (or return to the old ruck rule), so the logical extension of this philosophical position regarding the type of ruck competition you want is to then not reward the non-jumping ruckman. No, you don’t want a Ruck to jump over the line to run over another bum, but equally you don’t want to encourage a Ruck not to jump either.

High-level speech: How to interpret the Lyon speech?

That’s what Ross Lyon is actually saying when he says all teams should do the “heavy lifting” and play in Darwin, nine games to be played there, and it’s not unreasonable, why us? Why are we policing Darwin? Why do we have to play Gold Coast at a venue they haven’t lost to in the last nine games? Why us after having to play back-to-back games in Adelaide?

The AFL is not about to start playing nine games a season in Darwin. Not just because they add Tasmania to an already maddeningly contradictory and complex situation. But they could start adding more teams to the rotation of who will play in Darwin.

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