Essendon fails to back up fighting words on the field

MATCH REPORT: ESSENDON'S playing group made its statement with twitter hashtag on Wednesday night.

Collingwood v Essendon

ESSENDON'S playing group made its statement with twitter hashtag on Wednesday night.

Collingwood instead waited until game day to let their deeds talk with two hours of season-defining wet weather football.

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This might be the social media age, but old-fashioned virtues like grit, hunger and desperation still trump #StandByHird every day of the week.

Nathan Buckley's Pies, hounded this week by critics suggesting they would tumble from the eight, yesterday put a great rival to the sword.

Collingwood v Essendon

The execution was swift, and lethal, and with Essendon last night tumbling from the top four, might yet have long-lasting consequences.

Discounted and supposedly downcast, Collingwood simply swamped the Bombers from the first bounce.

The Pies have won four from the last and need just one more win to confirm September action.

After a week of such frenzied proportions given Essendon's plight this result was always going to be magnified, but on all available evidence the Pies are back.

Watson Pies' public enemy No.1

Don't look at the statistics - obliterating Essendon in tackles (+30), disposals (+43) and everything else that mattered - but instead look at the intangibles.

First the lesser-knowns and second-tier midfielders like Sam Dwyer, Luke Ball and Steele Sidebottom ran the Bombers off their feet, then the Pies swarmed Essendon all over the ground.

Collingwood v Essendon

No Dons possession was easily won, and no player looked up without at least three Collingwood players surging at him.

Jobe Watson ignored incessant booing to be Essendon's best afield, but a dozen quality Pies including Sidebottom, Harry O'Brien, Dayne Beams and small forwards Jarryd Blair and Jamie Elliott were just as good.

That desperation saw eleven Pies get on the scoreboard and Travis Cloke and Ben Reid sharing eight goals in a 79-point demolition.

But if the Pies were supreme, the events of the week and the Dean Robinson tell-all meant this game was always about Essendon.

All of the posturing of the week - the public support and the determination to bounce back from the Hawthorn clash - turned out to be hot air.

When the umpire thumped the ball into the turf to start proceedings, Essendon was slow and lethargic and totally lacking in run and risk and dare.

Collingwood v Essendon

Hird was adamant pre-match Essendon had not hit a mental wall given the public, bruising nature of the supplements scandal.

But how could it not take a toll given never-ending headlines and siege laid by the media daily at Windy Hill.

Yet if Hird is right, the alternative is just as unpalatable: the Dons just aren't good enough against quality sides after consecutive lessons against Hawthorn and Collingwood.

It was hard not to walk away from the MCG last night thinking that shuddering bang you just heard was Essendon hitting the wall.

Brent Stanton was a disappointing non-factor, the rest of the midfield was annihilated and the key forwards had little space and did nothing when it did present.

To salt the wound Courtenay Dempsey's ripped hamstring looked at the severe end of the scale _ enough to put in jeopardy a first final Essendon might or might not play in.

Collingwood was handed an official apology by Ray Gunston pre-match over baseless accusations attributed to Hird that the Pies were on ``something'' in previous years.

Yet what Buckley will hope to have proved to his players yesterday was that Collingwood's win wasn't physical _ instead all above the shoulders.

This win was based not on talent but a will to tackle, to pressure, to sprint to that next contest even if only a tiny chance to impact it.

Steele Sidebottom

Lachie Keeffe isn't a star but he allows Ben Reid to play forward and gives his all; Brent Macaffer has limitations but kept Dyson Heppell quiet.

Now the Pies have beaten Adelaide, Carlton and Essendon in the past five weeks, with early-season victories over Geelong and North Melbourne.

In this topsy-turvy season we still have time to fall in and out of love with both these sides before the ultimate reckoning in September.

But if we still have no idea if the AFL Commission will stop Essendon in its tracks, the suspicion is that the Dons might be spent anyway.

Who knows if Collingwood can sustain the rage, but at least we know their best is this good, after a four-quarter effort that might just be their best of the year.