Pre-Season Game 2
Collingwood v Carlton
Queen Elizabeth Bendigo Fox Footy 4.30pm Weather: Min 10 Max 25 Chance of rain 5%: < 1mm Wind: ESE 17kph Betting: Collingwood $1.45 Carlton $2.75 |
Last year’s 11th placed finish was the first time they missed the finals since 2005, when current coach Nathan Buckley was still the most important player at the club.
These stats speak of a club on a downward, perhaps irretrievable, spiral. But is it actually the case?
Let’s have a look at the sort of team they may field and discuss:
B: T.Langdon N.Brown A.Toovey
HB: P.Seedsman L.Keeffe M.Williams
C: S.Sidebottom S.Pendlebury L.Greenwood
HF: T.Varcoe T.Cloke B.Reid
F: J.Blair J.White J.Elliott
Foll: B.Grundy D.Swan B.Macaffer
Int: T.Goldsack N.Freeman B.Kennedy P.Karnezis
Em: J.Witts B.Sinclair J.Crisp
The above 22 would contain 10 premiership players still standing from the 2010 flag. In addition, Travis Varcoe won two at Geelong.
There are also no less than six members from that premiership side currently plying their trade at other clubs, some having moved on via free agency, others through the trade process, all for valuable picks in the draft.
Add in some enterprising trading from the Pies, and the club has brought in considerable and highly credentialed talent over the last few years. Strong players have left the club, yes, but the next generational seeds have already been planted. This might be the year they blossom, but if not, it won’t be long.
Collingwood is a side in transition.
Only one player played every match last season, Jack Frost, and, while valuable, he was put back on the rookie list. Heritier Lumumba (21 games in 2014), Dayne Beams (19) and Luke Ball (17) are no longer there.
Scott Pendlebury played 21, and we know he’s one of the top handful of players in the game. His contributions to the side can be lumped in with death and taxes, such is his consistency and class.
The next most games played, 21, were from Brent Macaffer and Jarryd Blair. One is a tagger, and the other a forward-half pressure specialist with dodgy skills. Tyson Goldsack, another of the defensively minded, played 20 matches.
Travis Cloke also played 20, but seems, counter-intuitively, to be getting more inconsistent as his career progresses. Jarrod Witts got 20 games under his belt too, as a second year ruckman, for a total of 27 to his overall credit.
Pendlebury aside, and with Lumumba, Beams and Ball gone, where are the engine room players, the nucleus of any top-four side, that are going to drive the club over the next-half decade?
Steele Sidebottom cemented his status as the hardest two-way runner at the club, and took his ball-winning talents to a new level in the second half of the year. The prolific Dane Swan had a well-publicised “putrid” year, but was it him falling off the cliff as an elite player, or just a bump in the road?
Levi Greenwood, brought across from North Melbourne, finally established himself at AFL level after eight years on the Kangaroos list. Can he be trusted to stay at that level? More Geelong fans were happy to see Varcoe leave the Cattery than not.
Marley Williams and Paul Seedsman, the running rebounders of the future from the back half, have struggled for continuity across their careers. Williams is yet to play in the first six rounds of a season. Seedsman has only twice played more than half a dozen matches in a row, and has succumbed to injury again this pre-season.
Of the 2013 national draft intake, Tom Langdon (pick 65) is the only one we’ve seen – he made a huge impression last season with his inordinate sense of poise and decision-making for a first year player.
There are plenty of other young players on the list who have shown glimpses of talent, but we don’t see enough consecutive games from them.
Ben Kennedy has played 20 games, but been a sub in half of them. Will Alex Fasolo ever make it, and is 2015 his crossroads? Where does Josh Thomas fit in? Ben Sinclair? Was Taylor Adams a disappointment last season, or is that his level, just a solid AFL player?
All of these players could have exponential improvement in them. Any one of them could flounder and not ultimately make the grade.
The more players you look at, the more questions there are.
Will Ben Reid’s body ever allow him to play good football again, let alone get back to his All-Australian best? Last year, he was a shell of a footballer when he finally got on the field. Is Jesse White really going to be the answer at 27 years of age, having never been so before? Brodie Grundy in the ruck, or Jarrod Witts? Can you play both?
Fittingly, given the amount of interrogation points in this write-up, the Pies are one of the biggest question marks in the competition this season. Their one-eyed supporters will tell you that finals are a certainty given a reasonable run with injury, and top four isn’t out of the question.
The facts of 2015 may be a little more sobering. The raw materials are there. But can they be harnessed? Will they mature? How much shaping and mining of the talent is still to be done? Are they ready to climb up the ladder for the first time in five seasons?
I don’t have the answers at this stage, but if you do, I’m more than happy to read them in the comments below!
Predicted ladder spread: 10th-13th
Predicted finish: 12th
Rosey’s ladder
12th – Collingwood
13th – Greater Western Sydney
14th – West Coast
15th – Carlton
16th – Melbourne
17th – Western Bulldogs
18th – St Kilda
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