Why Collingwood’s problems in the forward line are not easy for Craig McRae to solve

Their three key forwards Dan McStay, Jack Buller and Tim Membrey have two goals between them in the first two games.

McStay was a useful player in 2023 and 2024. Not now. Membrey has never been a long target or a high possession player, but on Saturday night he didn’t even touch the ball for nearly three quarters.

The Pies recruited Buller as a challenger and role player who could replace the experienced Brodie Mihocek and bring the ball down. He’s only started 12 games in his career, so he deserves the benefit of the doubt. However, he could only get two points in the two matches he played for Collingwood and has not yet scored a goal. He is an upgrade on McStay as a second bum, but this is more a comment on McStay’s bum than his.

The reserves have Charlie West, who has played one senior game, and ruckman Oscar Steene, who is yet to make his debut.

The inexperience of the alternatives will be effective in McStay’s stay in the team, but if his form continues, this reason will decrease every week.

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It should also be noted that this is a forward line without Bobby Hill, who is unlikely to return and whose disappearance from the team in the middle of last year coincided with his departure.

On Saturday night they played forward midfield with Jordan De Goey, who had been an excellent midfielder the week before, but he had no impact. Jamie Elliott, a bona fide star who should have been in last year’s All-Australian team, was poor in the first three quarters but was good in the final quarter when Collingwood abandoned his futile plan of bombing Hail Mary high kicks to his tall teammates and instead looked for capable forwards, not just tall ones.

The Magpies need to find a solution. Perhaps they will move Jeremy Howe forward when he returns from injury to replace their other long arms and create a forward line of mid-sized marking targets.

Collingwood are now starting to feel the effects of their age, falling outside the sharp end of the draft and having a few misses with their late first round picks.

To train a striker, a centre-back or a midfielder, they have to spend more time and effort than other clubs on young players coming to them from late selections or state leagues. In the case of Ed Allan and Harry De Mattia, they are first-round picks who have yet to show the potential they showed at the underage level.

But Collingwood, the AFL’s richest club along with the West Coast, went into this season without appointing a new head of development after Josh Fraser moved to Carlton at the end of last season. Instead, they split the role and put it on their coach’s workload. They’ve previously gone an entire season without changing football’s general managers.

That’s not why their tall forwards misfire, but it’s an unusual approach for a club that needs to unearth speculative talent.

The prospect of pursuing Gold Coast’s Ben King as a free agent becomes more attractive with each passing week.

Longmuir is right

Justin Longmuir did not raise the issue of the distortions and avoidable inequalities created by the opening round, but he was clearly pleased that someone had noticed an elephant sitting in the corner.

Longmuir said teams playing their second game of the season due to the opening round have a natural advantage over teams playing their first game of the year. He added that everyone in the industry knows this, but they don’t talk about it.

Of course, the easy answer would be to say that it was an aberration caused by his side giving up a match win. Maybe it was, but it was also an explanation for why they were doing it.

Clubs privately say Longmuir is right; It’s harder to play your first game against a second-placed side.

The rationale for the inaugural tour, to give expanding markets more coverage in prime time, was sound and smart. What was neither sound nor wise was that by doing this the AFL was inventing a new layer of inequality into a fixture that was already inherently unfair.

Any changes to the fixture must focus primarily on addressing inequalities, not creating new inequalities.

It is possible to take advantage of the fair opening of the tour. Give the four northern state teams the first window of the season to promote the game, but have all other teams play after that. The exclusivity window that gives expansion market teams valuable prime TV real estate in their season openers will still be available, but there’s no reason why they can’t play the rest of the competition in the following days.

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The AFL has already broken the seal; The opening round is no longer just for games in NSW and Queensland as St Kilda were gifted a special home game at the MCG last weekend.

Is it just a coincidence that Andrew Bassat, the man who has been most critical of the northern academies and the AFL’s aid to expansion teams, was the chairman of the Saints team playing at home in Melbourne that weekend?

If the AFL is going to play a match at the MCG on the Sunday night of the opening round, why not play a match on the Labor Day bank holiday Monday? This is a lost opportunity.

The season will open with matches played in Sydney on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights, the preferred local time zone, and in the northern states on Saturday afternoon. The remaining games can now be played on Saturday nights, Sundays and public holidays.

This will not dilute the marketing advantage of staging games in expansion markets and will not exclude fans of other teams who are now given the clear message that the AFL is taking them for granted.

Speed ​​Demons

Whatever the outcome, the first look at Steven King’s Demons was exciting. The midfield was always going to be radically different without Petracca, Oliver and the injured Viney but the summer, which promised a faster style of play, had to be met with action. That was it on Sunday.

The Demons looked quicker, more determined to play in the lane and continue the game. Jacob van Rooyen was clearly pleased with the change, scoring six goals. A player who mocked his potential looked much more assertive and threatening with the fast-paced ball. Maybe it helped that he had experienced Brody Mihocek in the bullpen alongside him.

Meanwhile, the Saints are now winless in two games, despite all the pre-season excitement and hope.

Bont’reminding

Last week, when the game was going to be won, Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge took advantage of Ed Richards’ effort to keep Marcus Bontempelli out of the middle.

This week the game was killed midway through by Bontempelli. He had 18 touches and three goals by halftime and the Dogs were ahead by 38 points. It wasn’t labeled.

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Weekly coaches will find a reason not to tag a good player. This week Adam Kingsley said GWS’s figures showed they were normally better at tagging rather than labeling. If those numbers still hold up after Saturday night, the Giants are looking at the wrong stats.

This is an interesting thing. No coach would leave a dangerous forward without a designated defender, but many will willingly leave some of the best players in the tournament without a tag as they wreak havoc on their team.

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