By Greg Baum
There were the giants, and there were the Giants. In a titanic contest, the team of the season prevailed over the team of the moment. The Magpies had their army, but the Giants had their tsunami, and they made for a mighty preliminary final match.
After Jesse Hogan’s goal 19 minutes into the last quarter, neither team scored even another behind, and that suited the Magpies just fine. Giants captain Toby Greene might have won it for his team with an outrageously conceived banana snap in the dying moments, but Steele Sidebottom was where he has always been for the Magpies for 300 and plenty games, on the line. It was that breathlessly close. But Collingwood have nothing if not nerve.
Nick Daicos and Toby Greene.Credit: AFL Photos / Getty Images
GWS were comically outnumbered everywhere in and around the MCG except where it counted, on the emerald greensward. There, the Magpies’ fabled extra could not make themselves felt for more than a half as the Giants silted up Collingwood’s patent running game and looked set to elbow their way into the grand final.
For nearly two full quarters, the Magpies were so stymied that they could not kick a single goal. But a more attacking formation after half-time opened up avenues, albeit leaving slits for the Giants. It’s footy’s eternal trade-off. Coach Craig McRae stressed this at half-time: faster ball movement, more risk, commensurately greater reward. Five goals in fairly quick succession wrested the ascendancy away from the Giants, and there it stayed. Just.
The stats sheet bore out the mind’s eye: there was nothing in this. Collingwood held on, said McRae, because they practise hanging on, at training by design and in games because that is so often how it shakes down. He made a point of it on the whiteboard post-match.
One-point wonders: Collingwood coach Craig McRae celebrates.Credit: Getty Images
Then there was the phenomenon that is the Magpie Army, whose chant this night was by turns ominous, plaintive, urgent and then euphoric. McRae was adamant: without the fans, the Magpies lose. He said they dragged his team over the line. Quiet early, the extra man was good for a vote by match’s end.
Other numbers were against the Giants: a six-day break, a third road trip in these finals. They’ve dealt with these handicaps as occupational hazards, but perhaps now they became a back-breaking straw. The Magpies were in every sense at home. When everything was on the line, their best were their best, none more than the, well, leviathan Jordan de Goey. But the Giants lost nothing except the match. And without question, they gained a season.
So another high-flying Collingwood season lands them in the grand final. Collingwood have been indisputably the best value round-one-to-preliminary-final team in VFL/AFL history.
They’ve played in 11 preliminary finals in the past 22 years and won six. Last year, they lost a prelim by a behind, this year they won by that same irreducible margin. One-kick results have become their motif and hallmark.
They’ve won more games than any other club, 125 more than the next most, Carlton. If they win the grand final, that will make 1600.
If. It’s the next step, the fatal last, that is their historical problem. That becomes next week’s intrigue. It began immediately on Friday night: how severe is Dan McStay’s injury? Does Nick Daicos have a case to answer for a tackle on Brent Daniels?
Hold on, said the ever disarming McRae. The Magpies would make sure to smell this week’s roses before worrying about next Saturday’s thorns. They go again. As surely as floreat pica, it’s their motto.
Collingwood came from the clouds last year, GWS from another galaxy this year. In round two, they lost to West Coast, an inauspicious feat if ever there was.
Both are probably a couple of years ahead of where they might have hoped to be when they changed coaches, but McRae had a year’s start on the Giants’ Adam Kingsley. So nearly did he and the Giants leapfrog the Pies this night, but they were stopped mid-air. Footy is a game that does not stand still.
The coaches worked together under Damien Hardwick at ascendant Richmond. Both have flattered by imitation, each playing a Richmond-style game, but with customised touches. This was Kramer versus Kramer. So it proved; there was not the depth of a teamsheet between them.
There is something even more final about a prelim than the finale. Grand final paraphernalia was being erected around the MCG this night, but only one team and one horde of fans will be back for it. For the other, it’s oblivion. This year, that’s the gallant Giants.
Everyone at least remembers who loses a grand final, but few remember the vanquished prelim finalist. You don’t think so? In the past 10 years, all but three clubs have proceeded at least as far as a preliminary final. This surprises people. For all their progress this season, GWS now become a stat. Whoever the Magpies play next week, whatever happens, history will remember it.
The vastly different histories and provenances of these two clubs made for a starkly asymmetric aspect in and around the ground. The Giants’ orange is distinctive, but in the sea of black-and-white was as hard to spot as a four-leaf clover (but not as lucky). The AFL sold tickets to 1000 Giants fans.
By one behind and by 95,000 people, the Magpies had the numbers.
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