Collingwood: An Analysis

REAL FOOTY

Collingwood v Essendon Sunday July 13, 3.20pm MCG Fox Sports 3.00pm Weather: Min 8 Max 14 Chance of rain 90%: 1-5mm Wind: NW 28kph Betting: Collingwood $1.63 Essendon $2.25

Four weeks ago, after an efficient Queen’s Birthday holiday disposal of Melbourne, Collingwood was parked comfortably in the AFL’s top four.
The Magpies had just won a seventh game from eight starts, only percentage separated them from second and, at face value, this season had, in premiership terms, another serious player.
Yet some scepticism about the Pies’ credentials relative to their top-order rivals remained, doubts that right now look to have been well-founded.
The toll since that 33-point win before 68,000 people is three losses and a narrow victory, and the consequences have been dramatic. Not only is Collingwood two games adrift of the top four, by next Sunday afternoon it could be out of the top eight altogether.
Sunday’s MCG clash with an Essendon buoyed by a tremendous win on the road against Port Adelaide is big enough. But it is just the first in a series of considerable obstacles the Pies must climb simply to be part of September for a ninth successive season.
After the Bombers, Collingwood meets Adelaide, another side pushing hard for the top eight. Then they play Port Adelaide. There’s a road trip to Perth to meet West Coast, then a couple of more winnable assignments against Brisbane and Greater Western Sydney before a huge final-round challenge against Hawthorn.
In their current state, the Pies would start a warm favourite in perhaps only two of their last seven games. And the task of turning things around for coach Nathan Buckley won’t be that simple, because it’s becoming clearer for Collingwood that the issues are multiple.
The Magpies’ defence has held up pretty well this season, but the loss of Nick Maxwell since round 11 has become more telling by the week, the backmen more frequently pulled out of position and taken to places they’d rather not be.
The forward line has been a festering sore all year, most apparent in the waning of Travis Cloke’s output and the over-reliance upon him and Jamie Elliott, a costly loss for the Gold Coast game, to keep the scoreboard ticking over.
On Saturday night, Gold Coast talls Sam Day, Tom Lynch and Charlie Dixon booted eight of their side’s 11 goals and hauled in 10 marks inside the forward 50. Of Collingwood’s 10-goal tally, Cloke’s two goals were the only ones to come from a genuine marking target. He took five marks inside 50. Only one other Magpie took more than one.
Jesse White’s omission for the clash with the Suns was significant, Buckley preferring the makeshift options of resting ruckmen Brodie Grundy and Jarrod Witts. Ben Reid’s injury woes have been a huge setback, and the news that he again hurt a calf in the VFL on Sunday the worst timing possible.
Given White’s struggles and the failure of Quinten Lynch before him to offer Cloke enough support, you wonder whether Collingwood laments more the loss of Chris Dawes the longer time passes.
But the jewel in the Pies’ crown in those glorious seasons of 2010-11 was always their midfield, and at the moment, while the names are still largely the same, their output collectively is a pale imitation of what it was.
The flow-on effect for Collingwood’s goalkicking is the most obvious legacy. In the Magpies’ nine wins this season, the midfield group consisting of Scott Pendlebury, Dayne Beams, Dane Swan, Steele Sidebottom, Luke Ball, Clinton Young and Josh Thomas, have between them kicked 50 goals. In their six losses, the tally is just 16.
Little wonder that as goalkicking spreads become a more telling indicator of team success, Collingwood continues to average fewer individual goalkickers per game than all but the bottom handful of teams.
Swan's form is a growing concern. The Brownlow medallist had averaged 30 or more possessions a game for five consecutive seasons heading into 2014. This season, he’s going at 26, a significant fall.
More than that, though, Swan appears to have lost his explosiveness, looking more often to give the ball off sideways or backwards than after breaking the lines. His efficiency has waned and he’s been uncharacteristically fumbly of late.
Swan isn’t the only premiership player struggling, of course. Heritier Lumumba was very ordinary against the Suns and Jarryd Blair appears to have stagnated in his development this season.
But the struggles of those more experienced members of the line-up, and the increasing dependence on the brilliance of Pendlebury, have become more conspicuous as Collingwood introduces more younger faces to AFL football. That induction would be a lot smoother were their senior teammates putting their hands up more regularly.
Of course, just how big a hole the Magpies are in depends largely on the perception of where they stand in the AFL pecking order.
Buckley and the Collingwood brains trust don’t appear to be under any illusions that the Pies are some way behind the genuinely elite teams in the competition. But for those who continue to believe this is a side that should be doing a lot better, potentially missing the finals for the first time in nearly a decade could prove a very rude awakening.