Twenty years ago to the game, Collingwood played the Brisbane Lions in a grand final at the MCG after losing their best key forward the week before.
Anthony Rocca was suspended in the preliminary final for a forearm to the head of Port Adelaide’s Brendon Lade. Collingwood lost by 50 points.
Collingwood coach Michael Malthouse and Anthony Rocca before the 2003 grand final. Credit: Vince Caligiuri
Dan McStay is no Rocca, who was a commanding presence and champion of the game, but McStay’s injury-enforced absence has caused a ripple through the team.
Dan McStay is consoled by teammates after Collingwood’s preliminary final victory.Credit: AFL Photos
Rocca was a player around whom others orbited. McStay is not that, but in his best game yet for Collingwood against the Giants on Friday night he illustrated how important and effective he is. He not only subdued one of the game’s best defenders, he counter-punched on him with a couple of goals.
Harris Andrews is the equal of Sam Taylor as a defender. He kept Brisbane in the game when they threatened to be blown away by Carlton on Saturday night. Collingwood will wonder about allowing him such scope – McStay would have been crucial to that.
Now they confront the dilemma of how to tweak the forward line. One out, one in would be preferable but the only serious consideration for that would be Billy Frampton, a player the coach likes, but he has spent most of the year as a key back or ruck.
The better option might be to go small on a hot day when run will be important and keep one of the two rucks, Mason Cox and Darcy Cameron, forward.
This option is not helped by Cameron’s form not being where it was early in the year. He was OK on Friday night, without being good. Presently, Cox is the more effective forward and superior ruck.
Oscar McInerney is an underrated opponent, or at least he was until the finals, for few people would underrate him now after his influential role in Saturday’s win. A lot will fall to Cameron negating McInerney and allowing Cox more time forward.
Going with a small replacement for McStay would mean Jack Ginnivan – who doesn’t offer run but finds a goal – and maybe John Noble as the sub. Or vice versa.
The further selection query for Collingwood is whether they go for a second change. Pat Lipinski will be lucky to survive. Tom Mitchell was only mediocre for much of Friday but was very good in the desperate final minutes of the last quarter.
If, and it’s a decent if, Taylor Adams can prove he is fit enough to play then he will do so. His form having been patchy, but his aggression is valued in finals.
In the two finals they have played, Collingwood have kicked just eight and nine goals. What the lack of scoring has done is raise a doubt about whether that is the form of a premier. Sides that grind out wins like that in finals show grit, but Craig McRae’s side plays best when it plays with run and dare, not just a resolve and impenetrable defence.
It’s not a grand final, especially a Collingwood grand final, without a selection poser.
In 2018 it was no key backs with Darcy Moore’s hamstring not trusted to get him through the game. In 2003 it was Rocca. In 2023, it’s Adams and what to do about McStay.
Charlie falls flat
Reputations are burnished and tarnished in finals. Sam Walsh’s was burnished, Charlie Curnow’s tarnished.
Charlie Curnow handballs while being tackled by Harris Andrews in their preliminary final.Credit: Getty Images
First, Walsh. He started well and only got better with his finals. Returning from a serious back injury, he carried the Carlton midfield. Against Brisbane his captain was closed down by Josh Dunkley, Adam Cerra lacked the run and drive of previous finals and his rucks were shaded by McInerney.
Adam Saad had too much on his plate concentrating on Charlie Cameron to risk the run and carry he normally offers. So much fell to Walsh as not only the stoppage player but as the creative runner ... and he was superb. He averaged better than 30 touches a game across his finals, but his numbers only hint at his impact.
He was known for being a neat, composed and balanced player, a good accumulator who was an effective user and wise decision-maker. He was a player without deficiencies but the lengthy time out of the team or maybe the quality of teammates lulled you into forgetting how very good he is. The finals changed that. He is now genuinely among the elite mids of the competition.
Curnow, on the other hand, had a finals series, like Jeremy Cameron’s early finals, he’d like to have again. Which is to say he is an excellent player who didn’t replicate his in-season form in the biggest games of the year when his team needed him most. He averaged three goals per game in the season, and then only kicked three goals in three games in the finals.
Yes, the delivery wasn’t what it could have been, but there were sufficient inside-50s to have better than a goal for the prelim. He was the most physically intimidating, athletically gifted, dynamic player on the ground, who had kicked 80 goals for the year coming into the match. And he was beaten by a second-string defender playing only his third game for the year.
Like Jeremy Cameron, who has dramatically turned around his early finals form, there will be time enough for Curnow to prove himself a good finals player because this is not a Carlton side that looks likely to go quietly back into the night.
Michael Voss was right – this is a team that competed with the very best through the second half of the year. Among their victories it is notable they beat Collingwood, Port, GWS, Melbourne twice, and Sydney in the year.
This is a club that has always presumed it should be in finals. This is a team that should expect to do so next year. It has the nucleus of a team to win it all. Yes, the bottom six is thin, but the Blues can be top four again.
Ticket farce
When you buy a premium membership for about a grand, that is sold with the implicit if not explicit guarantee of a grand final ticket if your team makes it that far, you have a reasonable expectation that: A) you will get a ticket; B) it will be a seat; C) it will not be restricted viewing and; D) it will be closer to the grass than the roof.
You do not assume: A) you have only a short window to try to buy the ticket; B) that others who pay less for lower-ranked memberships get better seats than you; C) to be told by the ticketing agency it’s somehow your fault; D) you get a standing-room ticket and not a seat; or worst of all E) no ticket at all.
Ticketing would be maddeningly difficult to manage but you know who should be good at it? Ticketing companies. It seems to be a fairly central part of the job. This should not happen.
Fagan’s Lions
Adam Kingsley and Michael Voss both have claims to being the coach of the year. Voss had the unenviable reassurance of the “full support of the board” uttered during Carlton’s mid-year malaise, which in ordinary times at a football club means the coach was days from being sacked. In Carlton’s case this year it actually meant he had the full support of the board! Who knew? Strange times.
To go from there to a prelim was a breathtaking turnaround. It was on par with Kingsley at GWS inheriting a team that finished 16th and in his first season taking them from bottom four to top four.
But, consider instead Chris Fagan, the Lions coach who had the lengthy Quinn inquiry into the Hawthorn racism claims percolating in the background for much of the season and the entirety of the pre-season. He – along with Alastair Clarkson and Jason Burt – denied any allegations of wrongdoing. They were ultimately cleared by that inquiry. Throughout it, the Lions’ coach was the subject of public allegations but was not allowed the same public forum to defend in detail those allegations.
Meanwhile, he had to coach a team. Then Fagan got his team to a preliminary final at home, only to enter that preliminary final mindful that frustration would grow if another season ended there, in a prelim final.
His side was then jumped in that final. But from that point at quarter-time, the coach and his coaches calmly recalibrated, re-set the team and won.
Regardless of what happens next Fagan – one of the few not to have played VFL or AFL to coach a team – has delivered one of the coaching performances of the year.
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