AFL 2025: Collingwood toying with Dan McStay as defender and could deploy him as early as this week

There’s a potential “sea change” on the horizon for a Collingwood forward, while a trio of senior players are mounting a strong case for selection.

Collingwood is toying with a potential positional shift for key forward Dan McStay “as early as this week”.

McStay has kicked 45 goals in 33 games for Collingwood playing as a forward and ruck back-up to Darcy Cameron.

But a string of injuries to key Magpie defenders has prompted coach Craig McRae to trial McStay as a defender for the past month.

McStay was in defence again at main training on Wednesday in the absence of sore captain and star fullback Darcy Moore.

McRae said Moore was going to play but would still consider deploying McStay in “a sea change”.

“We’ve been doing that for the last three or four weeks, to be honest, getting a bit more experience down there,” he said.

Collingwood is toying with playing Dan McStay (L) in defence. Picture: Mark Stewart

“We don’t have a huge amount of depth in that position, getting him (McStay) to train there at times and then we’ve just been using mids down back when Darcy Moore has had a spell.

“It’s good experience and I think he’s enjoying the sea change … it’s nice to have flexibility as coach.

“You go, ‘All right, they’ve got four talls, do we want to throw Dan back there and stabilise a little bit’.

“It’s all finding out now so that later on or even as early as this week we can go, ‘Let’s do that now, we’ve got more talls to play with’.”

McRae is unsure whether to parachute Jordan De Goey, Billy Frampton and Bobby Hill in for Collingwood’s blockbuster with Brisbane on Saturday.

The trio returned from stints on the sidelines through the VFL on Saturday night and trained strongly on Wednesday.

McRae said he would preferably like to give each of them a bigger runway to return but was coming to terms with the lack of control with injuries.

“In the ideal world they do probably both need a little bit more, but we just weigh up what the team needs this week and what’s best for those guys,” he said.

“I think (Bobby) is excited to be back playing footy, last weekend he was really excited and then today he trained exceptionally well.

“Regardless of whether he does play or doesn’t play he looks happy, which is a good thing.

“We’ve got to weigh it all up, you can go in with scenarios … but you never get the full control of what it could look like.”

Originally published as AFL 2025: Collingwood toying with Dan McStay as defender and could deploy him as early as this week