Robbo: Collingwood reborn from plucky to panache and play with character
Collingwood are different under new coach Craig McRae and they’re very exciting to watch writes Mark Robinson.
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For a while now, the Queen’s Birthday Monday has been a day about character.
On Monday, it was Collingwood.
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As the football world basks in what opportunities now await the revitalised Magpies – they have won their past four matches – the same footy world looks at battle-weary and injured Melbourne and wonders what’s gone wrong.
Of all the stats in footy, this one shames Melbourne more than any other.
After being the No.1 pressure team in their incredible premiership season of 2021, the Demons are now ranked 17th in the competition.
The 18th team? It’s Essendon. And the Bombers have been a laughing stock for much of the year.
Anyone laughing at Melbourne?
Questions plague the Demons, but one stands out: What has transposed a pack of dog-hungry players into one of meek resistance?
The spoils go to Collingwood, and the players and coach deserve everything that is said and written about them, but so too, do the Demons.
Their season is falling apart.
It was their worst contested possession game for two years. They were beaten 144-132. And they conceded 46 points from the defensive half, which was their worst result of the year.
Defensively, Collingwood was brilliant.
They took 13 intercept marks in their defensive 50m, which again was Melbourne’s worst result of the year.
Great minds tell us their defensive work is miles off last year, and that this isn’t a three-week problem off the back of three consecutive losses.
No, it’s been a seven-week problem.
Injuries hurt them on Monday, absolutely, but outside of the first half of the second quarter and early in the final, they didn’t look convincing.
Without Gus Brayshaw at half-back and Clayton Oliver in the middle, we might’ve been looking at a 50-point loss.
Hunger, system, individual form, individual stupidity on the grog, and collective unsettledness from last year between decision-makers still at the club, which the Herald Sun revealed again last week, is all a backdrop to this capitulation.
Yes, the Demons are high on the ladder and will get the opportunity to rebound, but make no mistake, trouble sits among this mob.
Not the Magpies.
These reborn Magpies are thrillseekers. They mostly have always been a team with pluck, but they’re different under new coach Craig McRae.
They are tough and edgy and now have a layer of offensive panache.
They kicked nine goals to three in the second half on Monday.
They charged all over the top of the battle-weary Demons, which on top of beating Fremantle, Carlton and an unpredictable Hawthorn in the past three weeks, puts them in eighth place.
Their ceiling doesn’t stop there.
They are capable, but how capable?
They defend to the death and attack to the hilt, and along the way have discovered and rediscovered some gems.
They have character, the Pies.
But character is about control, too. In other words, taking advantage of the opportunities when they are presented.
The Pies failed miserably in the first quarter. They led inside-50s 13-11 yet that was 0.5 to 3.1.
Jack Ginnivan missed two shots at goal, Mason Cox almost held a mark 20m out, Brody Mihocek almost took another mark, Jordan De Goey put a shot at goal out of bounds and kicked another into the goalpost, and Beau McCreery missed another.
In contrast, Bayley Fritsch, Ben Brown and James Jordan kicked three goals. Brown was accidentally lucky after opponent Darcy Moore slipped and Brown needed two clutches to take the mark, and then Jordan received a 50m penalty, after his opponent galloped backwards off the mark and after the umpire told him to stand.
The stand rule has been a positive because it’s helped spread the ground. Decisions like that, however, are not, because 50m is too harsh for such minor discretions.
The Demons held sway in the first part of the second quarter – in fact they dominated the game – and then the Pies’ character came to the fore.
In the first 15 minutes, they kicked one goal from four entries and on the back off aggressive run and movement between the arcs, in the last 15 minutes they scored five times from six entries.
Cox played his best quarter of footy – the third quarter – since the preliminary final of 2018, taking three marks in the D50, kicking a goal from a centre-square clearance and helping Jamie Elliott to another goal just before the final break.
One day, footy will appreciate where Cox has come from and, in the past two years, what he’s had to confront and overcome his near blindness.
He was superb on Monday and is much more than a cult figure. He is an X factor and was so unlucky not to win the medal for best on ground.
Oliver was massive in defeat and Cox was instrumental in victory. In that situation, the winner should lick the ice cream.
Mihocek continually reminds everyone he is a heart and soul player, which is gold for a forward, while McCreery bobs up too many times to not suggest he has a big future.
Daicos, Cameron, Daicos, Crisp, Pendlebury, Quaynor, Elliott … there’s the discovered and rediscovered.
And at the helm is McRae, perhaps the most important discovery of them all.
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