Deep Dive: An inside look at Collingwood’s biggest problems after 1-5 start to the season
Nathan Buckley is unlikely to be sacked – if he’s not at Collingwood next year, it will be because he’s walked away first, writes Jay Clark.
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Two pages of turnovers.
When Nathan Buckley scrutinises the worst kicking effort in his time as coach and scribbles down the names and places of all the horrendous missed kicks in the back half on Sunday he will have up to 25 examples to choose from for the weekly review.
And that was just in the first half of the 24-point loss to Essendon at the MCG.
From the moment Brayden Maynard’s first kick-in dropped short of its intended target Jack Crisp, the Pies’ execution was way off in the ANZAC Day blockbuster.
Minutes later Crisp missed his own target kicking out of half back, Jordan Roughead’s floater across the ground sailed way above Maynard’s head, Will Hoskin-Elliott put it out on the full, Jon Noble’s pass to a wide-open Scott Pendlebury bounced short and Jack Madgen, Will Kelly and Nathan Murphy all twice gifted it back to red and black jumpers, among many other turnovers.
Collingwood’s season is already on life support at 1-5 one quarter way through the new season.
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And no matter what happens against Gold Coast on Saturday, the lights are flashing and the sirens are wailing about the state of the list, the depth of talent, the lack of confidence affecting key players and the big decision facing the club about its senior coach.
Injuries to Jeremy Howe and Jordan De Goey can hardly be blamed as Collingwood have quite clearly had the best run with injury in the game so far this season having lost only five games from its best 22 to injury before this round.
There were grim looks on the faces of directors Peter Murphy and Paul Licuria as they walked and talked at close distance in the bowels of the MCG on Sunday after the loss.
And the normally friendly new footy manager Graham Wright was stone-cold silent as he took a seat on the floor at the back of Buckley’s press conference.
These are some of the men who will make a call on Buckley, but the truth is the senior coach is unlikely to be sacked.
If he isn’t there next year it is because Buckley himself makes the decision to step away first and start a new challenge.
Ross Lyon is certainly a man who could take over and carry the weight of the black and white stripes.
Minutes earlier in the coaches’ room after the match, all the Collingwood coaches asked the same question of each other.
How could we kick so poorly?
The numbers around Collingwood’s kicking problems this season are staggering and captain Pendlebury was blunt about the ball use, and the predicament facing the Magpies this season, saying “the ladder doesn’t lie”.
“We burned the footy way too much coming out of our back half of the ground,” Pendlebury told the Herald Sun.
“Some of that was going from unpressured (situations) to pressured (contests) when we didn’t need to and some of it was just not AFL standard.
“Our kicking today was really poor.
“That is on the backs and the mids who were getting back there to help.
“I thought we were working all right for the ball carrier, but yeah, we have got to get back to work on it (foot skills).”
The spotlight has been on Collingwood’s forward line all season and the ring-a-rosy around whether the club should continue to put its faith in American spearhead Mason Cox.
But Pendlebury said the problems were further up the ground.
“I wouldn’t like to be a forward in our side at the moment,” he said.
“You just don’t know what sort of ball is coming in.
“I thought there were parts where we looked really good and looked really clean (against the Bombers) but they are just so few and far between.
“I feel like we are a little bit unpredictable to each other at the moment which is not a good place to be.
“And no one means to miss kicks, but there is a certain expectation as an AFL player and the work that we do.
“You have to expect better of yourself. It wasn’t just one or two (players) that missed (kicks), because you can cop that.
“We had multiple (offenders).”
This is where the Collingwood players will want to look away as some of the analysis on kick rating from Champion Data is frightening.
Of the 206 players to have had at least 50 kicks this season, superstar ruckman Brodie Grundy is ranked dead-last at 206th.
According to the stats boffins, that woeful ranking makes him the worst kick in the caper in 2021.
But it gets worse. Collingwood players occupy three of the bottom six spots and five of the bottom 22 positions.
Kick rating takes into account the difficulty of the kick and the pressure the player is under when the ball hits the boot.
But 206th-ranked Grundy (-13.8 per cent kick rating), 204th-ranked Josh Daicos (-10.1 per cent) and 202nd Steele Sidebottom (-8.1 per cent) have butchered it.
And 197th-ranked Madgen (-7.2 per cent) and 184th-ranked Crisp (-5 per cent) are also up there with some of the worst kicks in the caper this season.
Sidebottom and Daicos are considered very skilful by foot but their turnover count was through the roof again on Sunday.
The players who lead the clanger count against Essendon on the MCG again on Sunday were Sidebottom (eight), Grundy and Daicos (six). Maynard and Madgen (five) were next.
The Pies used to have a skills acquisition coach who trained kicking and decision-making but he has gone under the football department soft cap changes, and he’s not the only one.
Collingwood had one of the best engine rooms in the game for its flag tilt in 2018 and similarly only massive efforts from Shane Mumford and Zac Williams in particular stopped the Magpies in the wet in the 2019 preliminary final.
The Tigers steamrolled the injury-hit Giants in the Grand Final, whereas the Magpies would have posed a much greater challenge.
Fast forward three years on and the same midfield, which is now missing Adam Treloar, Tom Phillips and Jaidyn Stephenson, looks noticeably thin and pedestrian.
On Sunday, Daicos showed some positive signs darting in and out in a new onball role, but it is concerning for Collingwood fans that Hoskin-Elliott and Josh Thomas were also in the midfield on Sunday.
The microscope is on Buckley, but does he have the cattle? Where is the upside in those two, Thomas and Hoskin-Elliott? Should Chris Mayne and Levi Greenwood play again this season or are their careers done?
Can Jon Noble bee-line the ball in a more direct fashion? The speedy wingman is an outside player but he had some nervous moments on Sunday.
And has the up-and-back switcheroo for Darcy Moore messed with the form and confidence of a man who started the season looking like the best key defender in the game?
Who can take over from veteran Roughead in the full-back role? And why aren’t the Magpies getting value from Grundy’s dominance in the ruck?
When he turned the ball over trying to grab the ball out of the centre square bounce on Sunday he was approached by Sidebottom shortly afterwards.
It is hard to read lips out in the middle, but one wondered whether Sidebottom would have preferred a more predictable tap than an attempted solo-effort.
And it was extraordinary that new president Mark Korda admitted on the record that the club would have preferred a lesser deal for Grundy instead of the whopping $1 million-a-season, seven-year contract he did sign.
“Would we have liked to negotiate a four- or five-year deal? Yes. Did the competitive market push that out? Yes,” Korda told Channel 9.
“We clearly would have liked a lesser thing, but that was - we are where we are and we (the Collingwood board) signed it off.”
That would have been weird, if not disconcerting for Grundy to read, coming from the Magpies’ new numero uno.
But if the Magpies went hard punting Treloar, Phillips and Stephenson in last year’s trade period to fit under the salary cap, they will undoubtedly reach for the chainsaw on anyone whose best footy is behind them in a few months’ time. Is there another big scalp to come as part of a list refresh/remake?
They have cleared cap room and free agents Zach Merrett and GWS Giants’ Josh Kelly are both out of contract and have sharp skills.
They are a big few months for De Goey who will either step up or look like the biggest tease in the game.
While he may have knocked back a $1 million a year deal from North Melbourne three years ago, that sort of salary looks overs on his form as things stand.
Collingwood will welcome outstanding under-18 talent and father-son gem Nick Daicos in the draft, but it is a worry that the club has also already given away its top pick (currently No. 2) to GWS and second choice (No. 20) to Hawthorn.
The second-round pick it got from Western Bulldogs for Treloar has blown out to No. 36 as the Dogs top the ladder.
The 1-5 Magpies are second-last ahead of winnable games against the Suns and Roos over the next fortnight.
Pendlebury said the Pies faced a big week on the track in an attempt to revive their season, which to be fair, may have already slipped away.
“We are a better team than that, but the ladder doesn’t lie, does it?” Pendlebury said.
“So that is how we are going and we need to get a move on really quickly if we want to do anything this season because we are in a hole at the moment and we need to get out of it.
“We have Gold Coast on Saturday, who had a really good win against Sydney, so the challenges don’t stop and we need to get back on the horse.
“Everyone is a realist. If we lose our next two or three we are 1-8, and it (the season) is probably gone.
“We were urgent today. We want to win. It’s not like we go ‘We’ve got a few losses up our sleeve we can afford to lose a few’.
“Of course you come here today and you want to win.
“We know we have got to play better. It starts with our preparation, our training track, working on our skills, and in general own the footy a bit more.
“I think we are not owning the ball enough, we are not making sides work defensively and we have got to sort some stuff out and sort it out quickly.”
WAS JUMPER CLASH BEHIND PIES’ WOEFUL SKILLS?
– Jay Clark
Collingwood’s finals hopes are hanging by a thread after falling to its fifth loss in six games on Sunday night.
The Magpies are chained to second-last spot on the ladder ahead of a must-win clash against Gold Coast on Saturday after a dismal 24-point loss to Essendon in the ANZAC DAY clash.
The loss raises more questions about the future of out-of-contract coach Nathan Buckley who said on Sunday night the club did not expect to be in this position despite losing two key players throughout last year’s turbulent trade period.
The Magpies booted out star midfielder Adam Treloar and forward Jaidyn Stephenson to fit under the salary cap and have welcomed in new president Mark Korda after an explosive racism report brought the end of Eddie McGuire’s reign.
Buckley said the Magpies would not give up on their season, but had to sharply improve their skills in particular by foot after torching the ball against Essendon.
Collingwood had 14 more contested possessions but eight more turnovers against the Bombers.
“It was a poor evening, especially our kicking,” Buckley said.
“Even when we had players who were five metres clear, we kept picking them (Essendon players) out.
“We had time and space with ball in hand. It wasn’t as if that guy was under real heat.
“But our clanger numbers were through the roof, especially early in the first quarter.
“I actually asked the boys at half time is there anything (a clash) in the guernseys?
“Are we not picking our players out 30m or 40m out because it looked like we weren’t picking (seeing) them.”
The club is hopeful it will regain star ballwinner Jordan De Goey for Saturday’s clash against the Suns but he will have to pass the concussion tests first.
Buckley said the turnovers had been a problem throughout the season, hampering the Pies’ ability to convert in the forward half.
Darcy Moore started in the forward line for the second-straight match but was moved to the back line after half time to help stem the bleeding.
He said the Magpies had to connect better with ball in hand to save their season.
“We just didn’t find each other often enough tonight, we gave the ball away when we had it,” Buckley said.
“We had to defend for too long. I think for uncontested possessions we are 16th or 17th across the competition on average for the first five or six rounds.
“That just tells us we aren’t owning the ball enough, we are just giving the ball back to the opposition.”
Buckley made several positional changes for the clash, injecting Josh Daicos into a new onball role and moving Will Hoskin-Elliott on to the wing.
Darcy Cameron enjoyed a “break out game” kicking three goals in the absence of Mason Cox.
Buckley said the coaches would discuss what to do with Moore, admitting the club might reassess whether it would continue with plans to see “a body of work” from Moore in the forward half.
But a loss to the Suns on Saturday would effectively put a line through their September aspirations and put a greater focus on playing youngsters.
“We want to win games of footy but we are not playing well enough,” he said.
“We need a greater contribution across the team and we need to be able to be a bit more efficient.
“It is connecting as a team and playing more like a team and playing more efficient and the margins are quite narrow.”
Originally published as Deep Dive: An inside look at Collingwood’s biggest problems after 1-5 start to the season
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