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| Fox Footy makes the case for Collingwood winning the 2019 AFL premiership. Source: FOX SPORTS |
| AFL 2019 Round 1 COLLINGWOOD v GEELONG Time & Place: Friday March 22, 7:50pm EDT MCG TV: 7mate / Fox Footy 7:50pm EDT Weather: Min 17 Max 27 Chance of rain 60%: < 1mm Wind: SSE 8kph Betting: Collingwood $1.60 Geelong $2.25 |
Here’s what the start of a match report from September 28, 2019 could say...
Revenge truly is sweet.
The script has been flipped, with Collingwood defeating West Coast by four points to win an epic 2019 AFL Grand Final, a year after copping last-minute heartbreak.
This time it was Jordan de Goey playing the Dom Sheed role, with the young superstar kicking the Magpies ahead with just minutes to play. It’s a perfect ending to a season that saw him join the AFL’s elite, with a top three finish in the Brownlow Medal to go with it.
It was clear from the start of the season that Nathan Buckley’s side was going to be driven by last year’s pain. Dayne Beams slotted in perfectly to an already star-studded midfield, with Brodie Grundy becoming the tallest ever winner of the Norm Smith Medal.
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| Could Jordan de Goey be the key to the Magpies going one better in 2019? Photo by Michael Dodge/AFL Media/Getty Images Source: Getty Images |
Traded away quality draft picks, showing they’re trying to win now, not in the future.
Once it became clear Dayne Beams wanted to return home, Collingwood proved it was willing to pay up for their former star, sending away two first round picks.
While there are questions over who he replaces, given the Magpies already had the second-strongest midfield in the AFL per Champion Data, he actually does fill a real need.
None of the Pies’ four mids who are rated above average in the 2019 AFL Prospectus - Scott Pendlebury, Adam Treloar, Steele Sidebottom and Taylor Adams - are real goalkickers. Treloar and Sidebottom kicked 12 each in 2018, while Pendlebury and Adams each booted nine.
Beams kicked 18 in just 21 games; that saw him post the sixth-best average of any midfielder in the competition. The year prior, Beams kicked 20 goals in 19 matches.
When you’re in the window, you have to try and win a flag. The Pies have recognised that.
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| Dayne Beams is more of a goalkicker than the rest of the Pies’ star mids. Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images Source: Getty Images |
Taken advantage of the academy system to pick up a potential gem.
It’s somewhat ironic, given Eddie McGuire’s historic protests, that the academy system helped Collingwood acquire a potential star more cheaply than usual.
Isaac Quaynor was already expected to be a high draft selection, but thanks to the Next Generation Academy system (and his dad hailing from Ghana), he fell into the Magpies’ zone, allowing them to match a bid and get the halfback for much less than he otherwise would have cost in draft capital.
Quaynor is a strong chance to face Geelong in Round 1, lining up in defence - for the first of potentially hundreds of times.
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| Daniel Wells played just four games in 2018, and none after the Queen’s Birthday clash. AAP Image/Julian Smith Source: AAP |
They led the 2018 Grand Final with two minutes to play.
Sorry for the reminder, but it’s a sign the Pies are already pretty close.
It’s not like they can cop worse injury luck than they have in recent years.
Every club has to deal with injuries, but some have it worse than others.
Richmond lost the fourth-fewest games to injury from their best 22 in 2017; the Bulldogs got their stars back in time for the finals in 2016. This is a major element of luck that every year impacts on the flag race.
In a sense then Collingwood overachieved last year by getting as close as it did to a premiership.
The Magpies lost 218 games from players in their best 22 because of injuries in 2018, per Champion Data. Of the eight sides that lost the most games to injury last season, only they and GWS made the finals.
This doesn’t mean they’ll suddenly bounce back and be fully healthy in 2019; luck doesn’t quite work like that.
Also, on an individual player level, health is a ‘skill’ - you have it or you don’t, and you can get better at it. A player like Daniel Wells, who has played more than 10 games once in the last five seasons, is unlikely to suddenly play all year (as good as it would be for the Pies if he did).
But it is unlikely things will get worse in 2019.
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| Nathan Buckley: Everything appeared to click in 2018. |
Nathan Buckley clearly figured something out in 2018.
Remember how big a circus it was around whether Bucks would be re-signed in the latter stages of 2017?
Now compare that to him signing a new contract last week. You might have even missed it.
That's a sign of how far things have come for the former club champion, as in his seventh year as Magpies coach everything appeared to click.
We know the Pies love playing for Buckley, but it shone through in their game style in 2018.
It’s been frustrating watching the club in recent years because they clearly had the talent to be better than their results said they were; in 2018, it appeared the whole team invested more heavily in defending.
In 2017, the Magpies were the 13th-best in the AFL at allowing opposition sides to score from their defensive half. In 2018, they were second-best. Funnily enough, the Pies rose from 13th on the ladder to second (post-finals) in those years as well.
Buckley had major success moving the magnets around, too. Chris Mayne had a career resurgence on the wing. Darcy Moore, when fit, impressed as a defender. Will Hoskin-Elliott and Travis Varcoe jumped from spending 25.6 per cent and 36.4 per cent of their time forward in 2017, to 79.8 per cent and 84.3 per cent in 2018 respectively.
And, of course, Mason Cox emerged as a key forward who tore a preliminary final apart.
This all bodes well for Bucks in two ways.
One, the team looks much better and settled heading into this season than it did coming into 2018. Two, we have faith that if issues do arise during 2019, he and his coaching staff can solve them.
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| The Pies defended much better as a team in 2018. Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images Source: Getty Images |
The fixture is much tougher this year.
For the second straight season, a team took advantage of the AFL’s fixturing rules to make the Grand Final.
Richmond and now Collingwood went from 13th to the last game of the season; partially because they had the draw of the bottom six side they were the year prior.
In contrast, as a top four side in 2018, the Magpies now face what has been judged as footy’s toughest fixture.
Compare their 2018 double-ups to 2019.
Last year: Brisbane (15th in 2018), Carlton (18th), Essendon (11th), Fremantle (14th) and Richmond (1st in H&A).
This year: Richmond (1st), West Coast (2nd), Melbourne (5th), Essendon (11th) and the Western Bulldogs (13th).
That’s six games against last year’s preliminary finalists, compared to just four games against last year’s bottom four.
The Pies also have an AFL-high eight six-day breaks; every other club, bar Essendon, has six or fewer.
The Plexiglas Principle
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| The Pies face West Coast twice in the 2019 home and away season. AAP Image/Julian Smith Source: AAP |
There’s a relatively simple concept that is often used in covering US sports, known as the Plexiglas Principle.
The idea is that when a player or team does something unusual, like make an enormous jump from year to year, it’s like bending Plexiglas; in the seasons afterwards, it’s likely it will bend back to a more normal shape. (This is an artsy way of talking about regression to the mean, basically.)
Our natural inclination is to assume a team on the rise will continue to rise, because humans love patterns. This isn’t always true; randomness means things don’t work that way.
Essentially, when a team jumps from 13th on the ladder one year to third the next, it means we shouldn’t necessarily expect them to stay there or rise. That is what Collingwood did between 2017 and 2018.
Yes, they improved because their players and tactics got better, but that doesn’t mean continued success is a sure thing.
Look at how close the margins were for the Pies on the ladder last year. They finished third by 0.3 per cent, and would’ve been fifth with one more loss.
And consider that Collingwood had one of the easiest fixtures in 2018, but face the hardest one in 2019. As shown above, they could easily lose one or two more games because their double-ups are different.
Entire games turn on the bounce of a ball. It is not far fetched that randomness, combined with a tougher fixture, will see the Pies drop out of the top four - and thus face an elimination final, rather than being able to take advantage of the double chance. It wouldn’t take much.
| 2019 Draw First Six  |
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