| 2017 AFL Round 7 COLLINGWOOD v CARLTON Time & Place: Saturday May 6, 2:10pm EST MCG TV: Fox Sports 2:00pm EST Weather: Min 11 Max 19 Chance of rain 20%: < 1mm Wind: WNW 16kph Betting: Collingwood $1.43 Carlton $2.83 |
GEELONG 3.1.19 5.4.34 8.7.55 11.12.78
GOALS - Collingwood: Moore 2, Fasolo 2, Hoskin-Elliott, Pendlebury, Phillips, Cox, Crisp, Broomhead, Sidebottom, Maynard, Elliott, Treloar, Wells
BEST - Collingwood: Adams, Pendlebury, Greenwood, Crisp, Sidebottom, Grundy, Dunn
INJURIES - Collingwood: Varcoe (tight hamstring)
REPORTS - Collingwood: Nil
OFFICIAL CROWD - 46,457 at the MCG
| 1. Five-day break, no worries for Pies Much was made about Collingwood's five-day break coming off a rugged Anzac Day clash with Essendon. But the lack of rest did not seem to affect their energy levels early, as the Pies took a 17-point lead into half-time. Collingwood extended its margin to 35 points at three-quarter time, as it made the Cats pay for a number of horrendous turnovers. The unbeaten Cats, who enjoyed a seven-day break, were flat and outplayed all over the ground. The Pies kept Geelong under 100 points for the first time this season, with Daniel Menzel's (who was managed for the game) absence keenly felt. 2. A sweet victory for under pressure Buckley The winning blueprint was established in Collingwood's only victory of the season against Sydney in round three – be daring with the football, make the most of your forward 50 entries and run hard defensively. The Magpies achieved all of those things against Geelong, easing the scrutiny on under-the-pump coach Nathan Buckley. Collingwood gained the ascendancy out of the middle of the ground, winning the centre clearances 10-2 in the first half. The Pies' spread from the contest proved to be irrepressible and their ability to spread the Cats' vaunted team defence was impressive. Collingwood still finished with an inaccurate 15.17, but the standard for the season was set with a 29-point win over Geelong. The winning blueprint was established in Collingwood's only victory of the season against Sydney in round three – be daring with the football, make the most of your forward 50 entries and run hard defensively. The Magpies achieved all of those things against Geelong, easing the scrutiny on under-the-pump coach Nathan Buckley. |
3. Parfitt set for lengthy spell on the sidelines The emergence of young draftee Brandan Parfitt in the first six rounds of the season had been a major positive for Geelong. Parfitt, pick No.26 in last year's NAB AFL Draft, won plenty of admirers for his composure in traffic and received the round three Rising Star nomination. But the 19-year-old looks set for a considerable time on the sidelines after suffering a serious hamstring injury. Parfitt collapsed to the ground as if he was shot from behind as he chased the football on the outer side of the MCG wing in the fourth term. The exciting youngster immediately clutched his right hamstring and had to be assisted from the field of play by the club's trainers. 4. A Dunn deal strengthens Collingwood With Ben Reid rested for the game against the Cats, owing to his injury history, the key question was always going to be whether Collingwood had a match-up for Tom Hawkins. It turned out that they did with Lynden Dunn, who the Pies traded for with Melbourne late last year. In his first senior game since round six, 2016, Dunn kept Hawkins to just eight disposals and one goal. The experienced defender, who played 165 games for the Demons, may not be an automatic selection every week, but his strength in the contest and long kicking gives Nathan Buckley a dependable player. 5. Greenwood and Selwood renew rivalry What's worked before will work again. That was the mindset that Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley adopted when he sent Levi Greenwood to in-form Geelong skipper Joel Selwood. Greenwood managed to get under Selwood's skin in the Pies' 24-point win at the MCG last season, and the argy-bargy continued on Sunday. There were plenty of verbal stoushes and physical ones too, with Greenwood receiving a free kick when Nakia Cockatoo came in to defend his captain with a forceful shove. Greenwood's constant presence and nagging approach kept Selwood to just 17 touches and four clearances. |
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Scott Pendlebury's Magpies bounced back from their ANZAC Day defeat to record an upset 29-point win against Geelong at the MCG. The Collingwood skipper described his effort against Essendon as his worst game in 10 years but despite having a five-day break, Pendlebury was everywhere when the contest against the Cats was at its hottest. He picked up 32 disposals and laid nine tackles as he helped the Magpies turn around a frustrating run of form to win their second game for the season 15.17 (107) to 11.12 (78). After failing to convert its chances for the first five rounds, Collingwood's confidence lifted midway through the third quarter when they began to hit the target. They kicked six goals in the premiership quarter to open up a match-winning lead, breaking the game open with the final three goals of the quarter. It was the first time Collingwood had won a third quarter for the season and came on the back of strong forward pressure and dominance around the stoppages. Geelong threatened to fight back but the Magpies held firm to defeat the Cats for the sixth time in the past eight encounters. The result will momentarily ease the pressure on Magpies coach Nathan Buckley, however a huge game against Carlton looms next Saturday at the MCG. Collingwood executed its plans well with stopper Levi Greenwood quelling the dangerous Joel Selwood who was coming off a career best 43 disposals in round five. Greenwood restricted the Cats' skipper to just three disposals in the first quarter giving the Magpies a psychological boost. The Cats moved Selwood forward at times, but he never imposed himself on the game finishing with just 17 disposals. Despite losing Travis Varcoe in the second half with hamstring tightness, the Magpies were able to maintain the rage with Will Hoskin-Elliott standing up to win big contests. Hoskin-Elliott created turnovers and kicked a goal while Alex Fasolo had his kicking boots on with two goals. Darcy Moore had his best game for the season, finishing with a career-high 17 disposals and two goals. Adam Treloar was tireless in the final quarter and Steele Sidebottom showed his class kicking a vital goal on the three-quarter time siren, while Taylor Adams laid seven tackles. By contrast Patrick Dangerfield – who has not displayed the same form since copping a heavy knock against Hawthorn on Easter Monday – was quiet with just 21 disposals and little influence. With Dangerfield not able to provide his usual dash, Collingwood led the Cats 10 centre clearances to two and Geelong's three highest possession winners on the ground were Zach Touhy (18 disposals), Tom Lonergan (17 disposals) and Andrew Mackie (16 disposals). Tuohy and Mackie ended the game leading the disposal count for the Cats and although Mitch Duncan and Steve Motlop battled hard they could not match the Magpie midfielders. In the end the Magpies once again kicked more behinds than goals but they were much more efficient inside 50 with 32 scoring shots from 59 inside 50s and also kicking goals from tight angles when they needed them. MEDICAL ROOM Collingwood: Travis Varcoe left the ground with hamstring tightness midway through the third quarter and remained on the bench. NEXT UP Collingwood faces a huge game against arch-rivals, Carlton, at the MCG on Saturday with both teams having the chance to keep in the finals hunt with a win. SCOTT Pendlebury took it personally. When the fingers were getting pointed after Tuesday's loss to Essendon, the skipper admitted to playing his worst game in a decade. He wasn't injured, but he was hurting on the inside. With his team's season on the line, and his coach Nathan Buckley under enormous pressure, Pendlebury produced one of the most important performances in his four years as captain to re-ignite the Magpies' 2017 campaign with a 29-point win over Geelong. The left-footed Rolls Royce was back, zigzagging through congestion and delivering the ball with the surgical precision which helped bring the previously dysfunctional Collingwood forward line back to life. Darcy Moore rediscovered his spring and his confidence, Alex Fasolo rid himself of his goalkicking yips with two beauties from the boundary line in the crucial third term, and Lynden Dunn, Henry Schade and Jeremy Howe held up a backline missing star key defender Ben Reid. In his first game in black and white, Dunn did the job on Cats' spearhead Tom Hawkins, potentially allowing Buckley the luxury to play Reid as a forward upon his return against Carlton on Sunday at the MCG. He would replace Mason Cox. And Daniel Wells showed why the Magpies went all-out to recruit him with a deft pass to Moore late in the fourth term. That was Moore's ninth mark, a career-high, and a timely return to form. Speedster Travis Varcoe provided the early spark in his role across half back against his old side but injured his hamstring in the third term, ending his day early. He was critical in the first half, helping Collingwood play a much more direct and quick game style through the corridor, after falling repeatedly into the trap of playing slow and wide this season. But overall, this was a different Collingwood to the one we have seen over the first five rounds. The Pies were so much more fluent and dangerous with their ball use. The class was back. And all of that was off a five-day break, and a light week on the track, for Collingwood. Geelong made its opponents nervous in the last term, chipping back a 42-point lead with fourth-term goals to Mitch Duncan and Patrick Dangerfield, who caught Schade with a desperate lunging tackle in the goalmouth. In the middle part of the last quarter the Cats had all the play with eight out of a string of 10 inside 50m entries, but the reality was this was Geelong's worst performance of the year so far. The superstar midfield brigade was well-beaten by Collingwood's engine room and it was hard to take your eyes off the Levi Greenwood hard tag on Joel Selwood. Greenwood physically targeted Selwood in a battle that threatened to erupt constantly throughout the game. "It was quite verbal … but I kept my head down," Greenwood said on Triple M after the match. And Selwood, who had only 17 possessions, made his feelings known after the final siren with a few choice words to Pendlebury, and a chest bump, in a heated late chat. The Cat begrudgingly shook Pendlebury's hand, and with it, the media spotlight will swap from the superstar Pie on to the hard-nut Geelong skipper this week after a rare quiet performance. Regardless, the discussion in recent weeks that the tag no longer had a place in the modern game was turned on its head as the Magpies easily won the midfield battle over the bulk of the first three quarters, before the Cats made a late fightback. The Collingwood engine room was dubbed the best in the competition by Champion Data in the pre-season and on Sunday the Pies playmakers, including Adam Treloar, Taylor Adams and new Pie Will Hoskin-Elliott, lived up to the hype. Geelong's half back line was well-lead by Zach Tuohy and Andrew Mackie, but the two superstar midfielders Selwood and Dangerfield were down and the support wasn't there, perhaps like it had been over the first five weeks. Brandan Parfitt injured his hamstring and finished the game on the bench after a strong start. Dangerfield was busy in the clinches initially but Collingwood's midfield had the clear upper hand early dominating the clearances 22-12 to the main change. But the impressive Collingwood performance began in the first term with Varcoe who switched sides with a lace-out pass to Wells, which in turn released Hoskin-Elliott to find Pendlebury running into a slick 40m running goal. Even off a five-day break, the team-lifting goal re-energised the Pies from the opening term. |
It has to be about psychology not football. It is the psychology that says "we have beaten you five of the last seven times, we know how to play you, we will win". It is the psychology that says that on the basis of that record we can shrug off the lethargy of a five-day break. It is the psychology of the yips. The psychology that whispered in Alex Fasolo's ear that he should ignore his set-shot goal-kicking record this year and take a shot from 50 metres out on the boundary. And so he kicked the goal. Maybe it was helped by the one on the run he took just earlier. His dander was up. The psychology extended to the coaching box. It had the discomforted figure of Nathan Buckley deciding to simplify the game. He tasked Levi Greenwood to Joel Selwood, mindful that he has done extremely well on him before with a game that is as much nag as tag. Selwood did not have a clearance in the entire first half, had no impact on the game throughout. It was a psychology that had a cascading effect for if Selwood was quiet then maybe too they could quieten Paddy Dangerfield. Jack Crisp was not exclusively his man but did put a lot of time into him, It was a shift of thinking in the box that was prepared to rest Ben Reid and introduce maligned Linden Dunn. Trust was rewarded for Dunn won his position and was creative by foot. It was a shift in thinking too, that Buckley demanded of his players to be daring and take a risk. There was after all nothing to lose for losses have accumulated like dandruff on a collar this year. The difference meant there was a determination to not only move the ball to the centre but to move it at speed. The consequence was some haphazard movement but forwards welcomed the arrival of a ball that offered them a better chance of getting a good look at it without three opposing bodies all around. After the chastising they received after Anzac Day, Collingwood offered a spirited reply that might have been anticipated. Their first quarter they were more involved around the ball and moved it with a more controlled mindset that said head to the corridor. They were able to get at Geelong for a run on the outside of the contest for three-quarters of the game until the five-day break began to tell on their legs. That was not helped for Collingwood by Travis Varcoe having a hamstring complaint midway through the third that kept him out of the rest of the game. It was an injury that looked far less troubling than Brandan Parfitt's hamstring injury in the last that had him helped from the ground. Darcy Moore played his best game for the year, which is not coming from a great height, but he looked purposeful in his run at the ball and his kicking. In keeping with Collingwood's season the half-time siren blew as Moore was a step away from kicking the ball. He did kick it. It went over the goal umpire's head. Denied a goal by a step. The Cats played a tentative game. The first half was as flat as they have been and they seemed at a loss when they were not getting the supply from clearances they have come to expect from Selwood and Dangerfield. It meant they were relying on the counter-attack and so to that end they had pleasing run from behind the ball with Zach Tuohy, Andrew Mackie and, surprisingly, Tom Lonergan. Steven Motlop carried on his early season form and was creative, while Nakia Cockatoo was a threat who didn't convert as many chances as he created. The Cats had their chance to stage an unlikely comeback from 42 points down in the last quarter but it was their inability to convert goals – maybe borrowing the psychology of Collingwood – that hurt them. They had more run than Collingwood but failed to punish. They kicked two goals in a minute but when the moment demanded they kept the pressure on set shots faded away. COLLINGWOOD has no choice but to adopt an us-versus-them mentality as it tries to get its season back on track, coach Nathan Buckley says. The Magpies recorded a 29-point victory – their second of the season – over Geelong at the MCG on Sunday, a win Buckley said the whole club would savour following weeks of speculation over his immediate coaching future. "It (the win over the Cats) tells you a lot about the group because they've got a great capacity to withstand adversity and to show great resilience," Buckley said. "That's a Collingwood trait and we've had that for a while. "We would like to not just be the battling side that performs with our backs against the wall. "Right now, I think we'll have our backs against the wall for a number of weeks to come because that's the story being told. "We see more blue sky than that and we see the potential to play our way more often and we see that as our challenge." A number of notable commentators had claimed it was a matter of when, and not if the out-of-contract coach would be moved on from the coaching position with the Magpies' disastrous performance against Essendon on Anzac Day consigning the team to a 1-5 start to the season. Asked whether the constant scrutiny over his job had affected him, Buckley – who said late last season that he would lose his job if the Magpies did not make finals in 2017 – was defiant in his response. "There's no more or less pressure. I don't want anyone outside of the club to be under any illusions that that conversation is taking place externally," Buckley said. "I reckon I've read the same article 50 times. It's just the same stuff – it's someone else's opinion regurgitated. That's great – that doesn't seep in. "It's not something we can control. It's not something I can control." Buckley also questioned the AFL's decision to schedule the game against the Cats with Collingwood coming off a five-day break against a well-rested Geelong on the back of a seven-day break. With Anzac Day falling on a Wednesday next year, there has been recent discussion that the League will pencil in Collingwood to play Richmond the weekend after their showpiece games against Essendon and Melbourne (on Anzac Day eve) respectively. "You play that game 100 times and we'd only win a handful," Buckley said. "The scheduling is poor. To have a team coming off five days playing a team that's played off seven. "But we were able to handle it and we didn't focus heavily on the break – we couldn't and we didn't want to plant that seed, so we were just able to get it done." Buckley said the Magpies would send Travis Varcoe for scans during the week after he spent most of the second half off the ground due to a tight hamstring. "He had a cramp in his hammy so we'll get a picture of that and see where it gets to," Buckley said. "We didn't want to take a risk bringing him back on. The docs were toying with it at some stage, but we put him away and we'll know more about that in a couple of days." Asked whether the win over Geelong could be a turning point in his side's season, Buckley said it was important to enjoy the spoils of their second victory of the year first. "Can we just enjoy the win? Let's just enjoy the win. I'll let you guys do the big picture stuff but we've got Carlton in six days," he said. "This is a win to enjoy, so the boys are doing so." "It (the win over the Cats) tells you a lot about the group because they've got a great capacity to withstand adversity and to show great resilience. That's a Collingwood trait and we've had that for a while. We would like to not just be the battling side that performs with our backs against the wall. Right now, I think we'll have our backs against the wall for a number of weeks to come because that's the story being told. We see more blue sky than that and we see the potential to play our way more often and we see that as our challenge." |
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