Collingwood v GWS
MCG 7mate / Fox Footy 1:00pm Weather: Min 7 Max 17 Chance of rain 20%: < 1mm Wind: E 12kph Betting: Collingwood $1.67 GWS $2.25 |
In another football year, come the halfway point of the season, two teams facing each other playing for fourth spot on the ladder might be viewed as a potential dress rehearsal for something much bigger come September.
But Collingwood's clash with Greater Western Sydney at the MCG on Sunday is something a bit different. These are two sides coming face-to-face in a battle not so much for bragging rights as, to a still-sceptical football world, for finals legitimacy.
The winner will move at least two games clear of the likes of Hawthorn and Port Adelaide, but only the bravest of souls would yet bank on the Magpies or Giants remaining ahead of those two highly fancied candidates when the finals whips are cracking.
Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley conceded this week that even he wasn't sure just where his side stood in the pecking order. And his opposite number Leon Cameron knows this game is as much about just exposing his young team to more as it is any jockeying for prime finals positioning.
"Probably because of the build-up, where we sit on the ladder; we've never been in that position before, seven wins is the most we've ever had in a season," Cameron said during the week, agreeing with the premise this might well the Giants' most important game yet.
"Playing against a great side that's got a big following; [it's] another experience that we look forward to and we really want."
Buckley, meanwhile, spoke with characteristic honesty when asked just how good was his team.
"I don't know whether GWS are a genuine top-four contender - I don't know whether we are," he said. "But obviously games like this go some way to giving you some more information around where sides sit."
That even the clubs don't feel they have enough evidence to draw many conclusions nearly midway through the season isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's a natural consequence of a seeded draw which pitted expected powers against each other more frequently earlier on than we'd become used to.
That's given us no end of big match-ups between heavyweights, and allowed other clubs to rack up the wins in bigger numbers and keep the flame of finals hope alive. But it means any potential upstarts are going to take longer to convince the sceptics about their credentials as a result. And that's clearly the bracket in which Collingwood and GWS sit.
There's not much either club can do now about perception. As Buckley put it, "you can only play who you play".
But the work both the Pies and Giants have put in over last pre-season on their obvious deficiencies has clearly reaped some rewards. Both have made dramatic improvements in areas that were obvious deficiencies at the end of 2014.
For Collingwood, that's been about winning more of the hard indicators, and a far more productive forward set-up.
The Magpies currently rank sixth on the differentials for both contested possession and clearances. Last season, their rankings in those categories were 14th and 15th respectively.
Two big factors in that improvement have been Taylor Adams and Jack Crisp, ranked second and third for the Pies for clearances and second and fifth for contested ball. They've significantly reduced the workload on skipper Scott Pendlebury, who has been able to creep forward with plenty of effect.
Indeed, an attack which last year was far too reliant upon Travis Cloke and Jamie Elliott has spread the load much better in 2015. The Pies finished last year the fourth lowest-scoring side in the competition. Right now, they've been outscored by only Hawthorn and West Coast.
Cloke and Elliott are both averaging around 2.5 goals per game. Last season, they returned less than two. In 2014, only four Pies averaged better than a goal per game, and one of them, Dayne Beams, left the club. But currently, Cloke, Elliott, Alex Fasolo, Jesse White, Jarryd Blair and Dane Swan are all above that benchmark.
GWS are also scoring far more heavily. And the increasing confidence of their midfield group, led by skipper Callan Ward and featuring the likes of Dylan Shiel, Adam Treloar, Lachie Whitfield and Stephen Coniglio, is reflected in their running, play-on game, the Giants' mark/play-on ranking having soared from 17th to fourth.
Perhaps the Giants' more significant improvement, however, might well have been defensively. Their points-against ranking has gone from 17th last year to eighth, testimony to the seasons of the likes of Nick Haynes, recruit Joel Pattful and skipper Phil Davis, the GWS co-captain absent for the first half of last season.
But it's not just about the back six. While the Giants' runners look good on the attack, they've also this season had a much better defensive ethos, and the numbers to that end speak for themselves.
GWS in their first three years conceded more inside 50 entries than any other team. The numbers might have decreased incrementally, from a whopping 62.4 per game in 2012, to 59.9, to 56. But 2015 has seen a massive reduction in that figure. To the end of round 10, they were conceding just 47.7 inside 50 entries per game, putting them sixth in the rankings.
In the context of Sunday's game, that makes the battle of the midfields and the pitting of the Giants' defence against Collingwood's revitalised attack particularly appetising.
But most elements of this game are. Not least the fact that a match-up the prospect of which even last season would have elicited audible yawning from the football world is this time around a battle for a prized top-four position.
Whether the victor is able to hang on to it for another three months might still remain a big "if". But whichever side emerges victorious should at the very least be entitled to keep the considerable army of sceptics at bay for the next week or two.
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