AFL Round 13 Melbourne v Collingwood: Mick Malthouse analyses the contrasting styles between the Pies and the Demons
The Pies and Dees are two successful teams, yet both play completely differently. Mick Malthouse analyses where Monday’s war of football ideologies will be won and lost.
It’s the King’s Birthday clash, and Melbourne and Collingwood are on show. Hardly have we seen such a stark difference in the ideologies of two coaches.
The Magpies have a long list of talented players, so if you take one man out of the game, like Jordan De Goey, he’s replaced with another who knows exactly what is required of his role and how to perform under pressure. He may not be as good a player, but it’s the system that works.
The Demons rely heavily on their brilliant players and they have some outstanding ones in the likes of captain Max Gawn, Christian Petracca, Clayton Oliver and Steven May. Melbourne’s structure relies on these heavy hitters consistently performing at a high level.
Collingwood under Craig McRae, with ball in hand, detests going backwards.
Everything is loaded to have the ball in the front half where the team can go to work.
The Pies pressure the opposition to make the fatal mistake of overuse, then they turn it over and score. They force teams further into their back half where they inevitably lose control of the football, which is manna from heaven for Collingwood.
Melbourne is quite prepared to push the ball around its backline until it finds an opening and then a fast break into its forward line.
Most clubs approach it this way, that’s why the Pies system is unique.
So, with two opposing ideologies on Monday, who will win?
The Demons and Magpies are both missing key players through suspension and injury. An unassuming Harrison Petty is perhaps the Demons’ greatest loss as he protects Jake Lever, and to a lesser extent May, allowing one or the other of these men to be an intercept defender.
Without the lockdown abilities of Petty, Lever can be exposed and then it is doubled down on May to do the bulk of the heavy lifting.
Without Oliver, who will miss through injury, Petracca and Jack Viney will lead Melbourne’s charge against the big number of Collingwood players who can work through the midfield including Scott Pendlebury, Josh and Nick Daicos, Taylor Adams, Jack Crisp and Tom Mitchell, who has been a revelation in filling the gap that was missing from last year’s midfield.
The suspended De Goey will be replaced by another talented midfielder, such is the Pies’ deep midfield list.
The Magpies’ abundance of numbers in the midfield is the Demons’ dearth. Melbourne relies on too few to get the job done in the middle of the ground.
Premiership forward Ben Brown cannot possibly play top level football in a team that has Gawn and Brodie Grundy as rucks-come-forwards. We know the capability of Gawn to ruck and go forward to kick goals. But Grundy has yet to prove that he is a consistent goalkicking forward. With Grundy and Brown in the forward line there is no defensive cover there for the Demons.
Throughout football history, dominant ruckmen have proven they need to ruck at 75-80 per cent of the time to be effective. The other time is spent forward or resting.
The late, great Len Thompson dominated Collingwood’s ruck, while the young up-and-coming Peter Moore played mostly forward with success. It wasn’t until Moore went to Melbourne, where his wish to be the team’s No. 1 ruck was granted, that he won the 1984 Brownlow Medal.
The sound of Gawn and Grundy in the same sentence is fantastic, in theory, but it has nowhere near worked in practical terms, and Brown can attest to this.
In contrast, Darcy Cameron is getting his wish to be main man at the Pies, and Mason Cox his wish to play forward more. Cox isn’t a great centre-square ruckman as he doesn’t like the body contact and has therefore developed a bad habit of using his knee far too early in the contest. Both players are happy in their current roles, as distinct from Melbourne where both ruckmen crave to be the No. 1 ruck.
Collingwood has scored in excess of 100 points five times this season, including three of its past four matches. The most underrated player in the AFL is Brody Mihocek. It’s not only his goalkicking prowess, but his ability to bring other players into the game by his commitment to the ball, that makes him elite.
Melbourne has also kicked more than 100 points five times this year. But their recent output of 76 points (against Port Adelaide), 72 (Fremantle) and 61 (Carlton), which has included two losses, will hardly worry the Pies’ backline.
There is an inconsistency in the Demons’ attacking arc and now a new reliance on Jacob van Rooyen, a 20-year-old, to manufacture a winning score.
It’s a forward line that could be easily overwhelmed by a Collingwood defence led by captain Darcy Moore, and a strong work ethic led by Cameron working in behind the line, and a no-frills midfield led by Pendlebury.
It’s very difficult to see Melbourne kicking the 14 to 15 goals required to make any inroads into the best team in the competition. Last year in the same round, the Demons managed just eight goals, and 13 goals in their second meeting.
I suspect Collingwood will win its ninth game in a row in a methodical display of teamwork.
It doesn’t mean there’s no hope for Melbourne, but the reality is that when these systems clash, it’s the bottom five players from each team that need to get you over the line in the big games.
The Demons’ bottom five will be clearly identified by statistics and output. The Pies’ bottom five will blend into the middle 10 and be almost unidentifiable. And that’s the biggest difference between these two clubs and the opposing ideologies.
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