By Greg Baum
Last week was not the first time the Swans have spoiled a Collingwood flag unfurling. In 1958, the Magpies won a famous premiership, but in round one the next year, South Melbourne beat them at Victoria Park and captain-coach Ron Clegg was so excited he ordered 20-year-old Bob Skilton to pull down the newly raised pennant. And he did.
At 0-2, Collingwood’s latest flag again hangs limply at half-mast. It means everyone is on their case. Is it hubris or happenstance? Is it chronic or curable? Is it a hangover?
Dejected Magpies after the loss to the Swans.Credit: Getty Images
It’s true that as the last team to finish last year and one of the first to start this early-starting year, the Magpies had a short, hectic off-season. The sheer volume of demands on the club would have been both distracting and exhausting. The church-state divide between the footy and marketing departments would have been blurrier than usual.
No one begrudged influential footy manager Graham Wright his sabbatical, but it will have stretched resources. There’s always more to any footy job than meets the eye. This week, another mid-level footy department executive, Clare Pettyfor, left.
On season’s eve, the Magpies released a film about their 2023 premiership, complete with gala launch. Last week, some players took a short timeout from their pre-match prep for the Swans to watch the elaborate flag unfurling.
Both these developments sat poorly with Leigh Matthews, who said it was one thing for fans to bask, another for players.
“You’ve got to be able to put it behind you. It’s a lovely memory, but you’ve got to get yourself into the present,” he said.
“Sitting in the picture theatre, watching the ’23 grand final, I thought, my players wouldn’t be doing that if I was coach.”
One of Matthews’ players when he was Brisbane Lions coach, of course, was current Collingwood coach Craig McRae. Together, they won three premierships.
To what degree the big picture impacts on the small is always debatable. But effect always looks for cause. And the Magpies are struggling. The scoreboard flattered them in their losses to GWS and Sydney, admittedly two likely premiership contenders this season.
Eddie McGuire, no longer formally involved but still a fan, echoed many when he said he thought they’d “mucked up the selection”.
Nathan Buckley said their all-of-ground defence had loosened, exposing the back six. The stats bear this out: GWS and Sydney both kicked a disproportionate number of easy goals against the Pies.
McRae pinpointed a surfeit of defensive turnovers. “Everyone in the world can see that,” he said.
Garry Lyon said they were missing Nathan Murphy and his hallmark desperation. “He’s everything Collingwood aren’t,” Lyon said.
Former captain Peter Moore (main), the father of current captain Darcy Moore, takes part in the round one 2024 celebrations to mark the club’s 2023 premiership.Credit: Getty Images
Jonathan Brown said they were sorely missing Daniel McStay. “He’s been an underrated loss. He draws the ball really well,” Brown said. “If he wasn’t playing against GWS, they don’t win that prelim and don’t go on to win the premiership.”
Meantime, everyone else has gone to school on how to stifle and beat Collingwood. This is footy’s timeless reality; hunter becomes hunted.
There’s a corollary. “Expectations are real,” said a former senior AFL coach this week. “They play on the minds of the players as much as the fans. Everyone’s expecting Collingwood to win.”
It all adds up to what looks like a hangover.
Concluded Buckley: “The good teams, when they’re playing well, make everything look easy. Collingwood are making it look hard at the moment. That’s not what we’re used to.”
Cussed St Kilda await on Thursday night, then the Lions in Brisbane.
McRae remains indomitably upbeat. “Nothing’s easy in this world,” he said after a conspicuously up-tempo training session on Tuesday.
“And we like it like that. Life’s hard and we actually like the challenges. I can say last year was a bit more challenging than this year. Last year, we had a lot of challenges. People forget that.”
The Magpies celebrate after their 2023 premiership.Credit: Eddie Jim
People forget plenty. In this socialistic competition, backing up is harder than ever. Geelong won the 2022 grand final by 81 points and did not make the finals the next year. Not since 2020 has a reigning premier even won a final the next year.
Collingwood in 2023 were only fractionally better than the competition. McRae has been at pains to note this. Of the Magpies’ 38 wins in his two years, 16 were by a goal or less. The last three were their three finals last year. For all the mystique that has grown up around that stat, it’s also the sort that is bound to even out eventually.
Modern footy works by gravity. The Magpies have been up for six years, playing as many preliminary finals in that stretch as Richmond did in their three-premiership reign. Meantime, they’ve aged. There are now nine players aged 30 or more on their list.
That does not mean that they are definitively gone, but it does make natural improvement harder. And the competition is improving all the time.
It’s early in the season. All these contemplations could be made redundant as soon as Thursday night.
But pondering it all this week, a Magpie luminary was phlegmatic. Perhaps, he said, we should not be dwelling on what has gone wrong this year, but on – in contradiction of an ill-starred history – how much went right in last year’s finals and on grand final day.
It would mean that what Collingwood are suffering now is not a hangover, just footy taking its course.
It’s a sobering thought.
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