AFL Daily: Live rolling footy news from around Australia for Friday August 2, 2019
Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley says talk of an injury crisis at the club as overblown amid calls for the Magpies to conduct a review into their lengthy injury list. RECAP THE DAY'S NEWS
Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley says talk of an injury crisis at the club as overblown as the team aims to arrest its “coughing and spluttering” form against the Gold Coast.
There have been calls for the Magpies to conduct a review into their lengthy injury list that has contributed to the team’s fall from second on the ladder to sixth.
Jordan De Goey (hamstring) and Isaac Quaynor (foot stress reaction) were the latest additions this week to an injury list that also includes Darcy Moore (hamstring), Tom Langdon (knee), Ben Reid (hamstring) and Daniel Wells (knee).
Buckley played down the Magpies’ mounting injury toll and said the team should be performing better than it had been with the players it had available.
“I think that it’s been overblown in some shape or form,” Buckley said.
“We’ve got some soft-tissue concerns, but I don’t think ours are any more major than others.
“We’ve got some other boys that have had some knee or hip issues and some other non-footy related ones. We have got some access to some more boys this week and hopefully build over that next month for us.“I would encourage anyone to just have a look a little bit deeper. We would love to have 45 players available all of the time. That’s utopia and that’s what we are heading towards.
“It’s hard to sit here as a coach and say that it’s acceptable … but we can make do with what we have got and we should be performing better than we are at the moment.”
The Magpies are set to regain Taylor Adams (hamstring awareness) and defender Jordan Roughead (concussion) for the clash against the Suns at the MCG.Buckley declared there was “no risk” with Roughead playing this weekend even though he was left so dazed in last week’s loss to Richmond that he was believed to have said “what the hell is Bevo doing”, thinking he was playing for his old club, the Western Bulldogs.
“He has gone through the normal protocols, we have had a nine-day break ultimately so there is no risks with Jordan playing this week,” Buckley said.
“Roughy is good. He is with it. He was kicking left-foot (at training), I said ‘Do you realise you are a right-footer?’ and he goes ‘Yeah, yeah I am just practising with my left foot’.”
Buckley said last week’s loss to the Tigers showed the gap between the Magpies and the best in the competition, but was confident the team had time to turn its form around before finals.
“It’s extremely important to continue to get a sense of what sort of football we’re playing and find that connection on field that is clearly coughing and spluttering at the moment,” he said.
“We have four games of home-and-away left and our challenge is to improve our football and get it to a point where we are comfortable and believing in or own skins that we can play against the best sides and right now we are not there.
“Three weeks ago we beat West Coast over there and that seemed like a strong performance … but our last two performances, in particular last week against Richmond who are the form side of the comp, showed us the gap between the best and where we are at the moment.
“The good new is that we are not going into an elimination final and we have got time and we’re pretty clear on where our growth areas are.”
Originally published as AFL Daily: Live rolling footy news from around Australia for Friday August 2, 2019