Craig McRae on what led to Nick Daicos being withdrawn against the Brisbane Lions, his hopes for a quick return

Collingwood defended its decision to fly Nick Daicos to Brisbane to face the Lions but the superstar midfielder withdrew with a calf injury just 15 minutes before the start of play on Thursday night.

This follows last week’s bizarre move by the Magpies to leave captain Darcy Moore on the field against GWS while he was clearly suffering from a hamstring complaint.

Moore was then eliminated for the next three to four weeks.

But Craig McRae said Daicos came to Brisbane fully expecting to play.

“He had a fungus in his calf,” the Collingwood coach said.

“In training on Tuesday he just wanted to move, that was his intention. “He didn’t train and was limping around.

“Nick is an extremely positive guy, one of the best professionals in the game, let alone at our club, and we have given him every chance to develop.

“Then he comes here [for the warm-up]and we thought it would start to improve. He just didn’t.

Daicos did not look at ease when he stepped onto the Gabba turf for the club’s pre-match routine.

His right calf was heavily bound and he could barely run. He was not subjected to fitness testing; Failed to warm up.

“If it were a horse, you wouldn’t back it, would you?” McRae still didn’t know at that stage whether Daicos would come off, despite Fox Footy joking ahead of the match.

The withdrawal of the shock moments later clearly hurt Collingwood. They were no match for the Lions’ oversized midfield in a 54-point defeat by 17.17 (119) to 10.5 (65).

“I felt like we were behind most of the night, to be honest,” McRae said.

“Obviously the scoreboard shows that. The stops really slipped away from us. When you lose ground against this team, it makes our job really difficult.”

“I probably want to give them more credit than I have. [talk about] We. “But I said to the playing group, ‘We’ve got a lot of things ahead of us that we can fix really quickly and we need to start working on that.'”

McRae said he did not expect his side to be affected by the latest change and did not expect Ed Allan to be the emergency replacement for Daicos.

“What happened before the game really shouldn’t, shouldn’t, affect the first contest or our stoppage structure,” McRae said.

“I know you could make an argument to take your best player from any team and it would probably upset them, but you don’t want to think about that.”

He stated that Daicos will play against Fremantle in the Gather Round match on Friday night next week.

“We hope he recovers,” McRae said. “We have three days off. We’re back.” [at the club] On Monday.

“It’s a corkie. You’d think it would start moving. Unless it starts expressing itself as something else, I don’t know, but we’ll see how that goes.”

McRae said club great Scott Pendlebury was also on track to take on the Dockers at Adelaide Oval next week.

“I left the club yesterday morning and he’s been there rehabbing and said, ‘I feel fine,'” the Collingwood coach said.

“He needs to train and he needs to go through training, but if his word is anything to go by, it will be hard to leave him out.”

Collingwood will be sweating on winger Steele Sidebottom, who suffered a heavy blow to his ribs during a bone-crushing challenge from Brisbane’s Keidan Coleman.

Sidebottom left the ground just before half-time, supporting his side, and disappeared to the dressing rooms for medical attention during the long break, but returned to the field in the second half.

“He’s a tough dude,” McRae said of Sidebottom. “It was a really good shot and kind of symbolic. [of] There was a part of our night where we didn’t play with a good method from time to time.

“I thought we weren’t handling the ball anywhere near what we could do and that puts a lot of pressure on you, you’re going to get hit by handling the ball in front of guys.”

It was a night to be savored for Brisbane. Two-time Norm Smith medalist Will Ashcroft was named the match-winning midfielder in Daicos’ absence.

He made 36 disposals and scored a superb left-foot goal from the boundary, a goal that could be a candidate for goal of the year. He has now overtaken former captain Lachie Neale (29 tackles) as the Lions’ leading tackler.

The Lions scored six goals from center square range, but manager Chris Fagan said Daicos’ late withdrawal did not change their approach.

“Not much has changed since we made a decision after what happened last week. [against St Kilda]”Just to support our midfield,” he said.

“We were just going to try to suppress Daicos’ impact in stoppage time, so we just kind of went out there when he wasn’t playing. [Jordan] De Goey needs to try a little harder and prevent him from having a big impact.

“But it was never going to be a big hard tag like we did against Nasiah. [Wanganeen-Milera] last week.”

The Lions will be boosted by the return of premiership captain Harris Andrews from suspension next week.

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