Collingwood players can hold their head high after brave season
LONG after the pain of their heartbreaking loss to West Coast subsides — and it will take some time for that to happen— the Magpies will realise significant gains were made in 2018.
IT was the cruellest of conclusions to one of Collingwood’s bravest seasons.
Long after the pain of the heartbreaking five-point Grand Final loss to West Coast subsides — and it will take some time for that to happen — the significant gains of Nathan Buckley’s team across the 2018 season will be the tangibles they can take into next year.
From 13th to unlucky runners-up is some sort of turnaround.
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But as brave as the Magpies were throughout Saturday’s game — and throughout the season — the “what-ifs” and “what-might-have-beens” will haunt them over summer.
To come so close to glory, and to lead for all but NINE minutes of one of the most epic Grand Finals in modern memory cuts deep.
You didn’t need to be in the Collingwood rooms to know that, though a glimpse players and their families consoling them cut a stark image, with tears flowing on both sides.
It had been yet another extraordinarily brave effort from a team that encountered so much adversity, so many injuries and its share of personal anguish this year.
And it almost ended in the most unlikely of flags for a coach who convinced the footy world this year that he was good at his craft, and for a playing group welded together emotionally that rode the crest of a wave, only to be dumped on their backsides coming out of the water.
After kicking the first five goals of the game in an intoxicating opening, the Magpies just couldn’t hold on for long enough against the Eagles’ aerial power and repeat inside-50s, particularly in the final term.
Yet as tired as they were, the Magpies never gave up the fight, as evidenced by Tyson Goldsack’s desperate lunge at Liam Ryan late in the final term, where he seemed almost punch-drunk with exhaustion yet unwilling to give up on what was meant to be their fairytale.
Cruelly, with less than two minutes remaining, a goal to Dom Sheed from a difficult angle, became a bridge too far, as the Magpies couldn’t penetrate through the Eagles’ wall in the dwindling time left.
The difference between success and failure can sometimes be measured in centremetres.
That’s the way it was when the final siren sounded, as the Eagles converged in a celebratory scrum only metres from a handful of Magpies, who laid crestfallen on the ground after coming so close to the ultimate prize only to have ripped it out of their hands.
In the coaches’ box, Buckley, still chasing that elusive premiership cup since his AFL playing debut 25 years ago, clasped his head in his hands, shattered by the moment, but knowing his players had given their all, and then some.
He sat alone for a few moments in reflection, knowing this was the closest he had come to tasting a flag as a player or coach, from his collective 442 games.
The near-miss to Brisbane in 2002 as a player ached away at him; this one will likely do the same.
Each was an exceptionally courageous effort against the odds and against formidable opponents.
But sensing his players needed him, he quickly moved from the box to the ground to console them.
As his players sat silently and watched West Coast receive their premiership medals, the coach got to each and every member of his playing group, picking some off the ground, hugging others.
He clung tight to defender Jeremy Howe — who idolised Buckley as a kid — who was playing in memory of his late mother, Kim. And he embraced Travis Varcoe, who kicked the first goal of the game and launched bone-crunching tackles in honour of his sister Maggie, who died after a football accident last month.
Footy is very important; family is everything. You could see that in the rooms, with Steele Sidebottom’s brothers getting around him as they have always done; with Will Hoskin-Elliott cradling his smiling young son, Flynn, as he does after every match; and with Mason Cox surrounded by his parents and brothers.
It’s a mantra that has fuelled this Collingwood team — one in, all in — and will be the same as they seek to go a step further next season.
Buckley has embraced this emotional wave that has driven Collingwood in 2018, not just with his players but with everyone around the club — even one cheer squad member who was shattered when the banner collapsed before the team ran out. In the rooms last night, Buckley and his captain Scott Pendlebury urged the players to stick together, and to turn this disappointment into something special in 2019.
The skipper said: “We’re going to need each other more than ever in the next 24 to 48 hours.”
As heartbreaking as the loss was, the challenge is to turn the hurt, the pain and the tears into something extra next year.
Nothing is a given, as Adelaide showed us this year, but knowing the steel of this group, you just know they will throw everything into it.
WEST COAST 2.2 4.3 8.7 11.13 (79)
COLLINGWOOD 5.1 6.3 8.7 11.8 (74)
GOALS
Eagles: Kennedy 3, Hutchings, Shuey, Sheed, Darling, Yeo, Cripps, Vardy, Rioli
Magpies: De Goey 3, Cox 2, Stephenson 2, Hoskin-Elliott, Varcoe, Mihocek, Adams
BEST
Eagles: Shuey, Sheed, Barrass, Darling, McGovern, Hutchings, Kennedy, Yeo.
Magpies: Adams, Langdon, Treloar, Sier, Pendlebury, De Goey.
INJURIES
Eagles: Nil. Magpies: Thomas (lower leg).
UMPIRES
Stevic, Ryan, Rosebury.
CROWD
100,022 at the MCG.
Originally published as Collingwood players can hold their head high after brave season
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