Collingwood’s leadership group led open and honest review of loss to North Melbourne
Collingwood players were shown videos of themselves not going hard enough against North Melbourne in a brutally open and honest review led by the club’s leadership group.
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Collingwood had an open and honest review of its loss to North Melbourne, star midfielder Taylor Adams has revealed.
The review on Monday was driven by the leadership group, which is led by captain Scott Pendlebury and vice-captain Steele Sidebottom.
Coach Nathan Buckley said his players “got out of the way a few times” as it was brutalised physically by a ferocious Kangaroos team.
Adams, who is a member of the five-man leadership group, declared the “majority” of the 22 who played against North Melbourne were guilty of not going hard enough.
“As leaders we ran the review on Monday and showed all the clips that were outliers for us, that we hadn’t seen for four or five years. Even when we weren’t going well in ‘16 and ‘17, we never saw this stuff. We hung our hat on our contest and pressure and our hardness around the ball,” he said.
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“The fact of the matter was, it wasn’t one or two players, it was the majority of our team, including some of our leaders, including some of our guys you never see it from.
“The message was we’re watching it now so that we can move on and learn from it and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
“We were pretty open and honest throughout our review on Monday. There wasn’t a lot that was missed. It was good to see the boys responded really well to it and that’s the great thing about or group, once we hit something on the head — and it was our contest and pressure — we usually see a spike in that the following week.”
Adams said the confronting videos spoke for themselves, with players taking ownership of their actions.
“That’s the beauty of our group, there actually isn’t too much you need to say. Once you see the clips, they sort of speak for themselves,” he said on RSN927.
“The guys take complete ownership for it and know the reason why we’re showing this isn’t to humiliate somebody or make them feel crappy, it’s to learn from it, to highlight why we lost the game, like we do every single week. Why we played bad patches of footy or whatever it is. We highlight where we didn’t go so well and get on with it.
“The message that came from us as leader is the review is done, that’s in the past, what you’ve got to do now is your line meeting, your individual tape and from that point on, we’re looking forward to Hawthorn.
“It’s a matter of putting in the work and making sure that something like that doesn’t happen again.”
Adams watched from the sidelines as the Magpies slumped to a 44-point loss, having been out since Round 7 with a groin injury.
He echoed Buckley’s brutal assessment of the loss.
“I didn’t see that sort of performance coming from our end. We sort of rolled over a little bit,” Adams said.
“Bucks was pretty stern with his message after the game. I guess as players we echoed that kind of sentiment that it was a shellacking … we got smacked. They smacked us around the ball. I’ve never seen anyone beat us around the ball before.
“Our game is based off contest and pressure and that was sort of non-existent on Saturday night, so it makes it really hard for the rest of our game to come together.”
Collingwood will hold its main training session today ahead of Friday night’s clash against Hawthorn, the first of a season-defining month.
The Magpies play the Hawks, Eagles, Giants and Tigers in the next four weeks.
Adams expects to see a big response from the players.
“We’ve seen it all, we’ll train today and we’re planning on moving on as quickly as possible. That was the whole point of the review,” he said.
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