Cam Hooke’s Collingwood Life 2025: Round 19 Review / Round 20 Preview

 

G’day True Believers.

 

I did not enjoy that. Well, I was reasonably confident for most of the game – with two goals scored early, who can Lose from a 21 Point Margin early in the Quarter.

 

Another Loss; this one by a single Point. We have got pretty used to Winning the close ones over the last couple of years. Not particularly happy to be on the other side, now, two weeks in a row. And particularly against teams well below us on the Ladder. See below regarding our next game against Richmond.

 

Whatever. See Coach McRae’s comments following the game, link below. There’s still a way to go to finish the H&A season. Let’s push to keep our Top position on the Ladder – the current Ladder would have us meeting Geelong in the first week of the Finals; my preference is to avoid having to play Brisbane and/or Adelaide at their home grounds, so stay Top.

 

Go Pies.

Round 19

Collingwood 11.12.78 were defeated by Fremantle 12.7.79.

Scoring shots: 23 (us) / 19 (them). That reflects average kicking by us, but great kicking by them.

 

Match Report – www.afl.com.au/afl/matches/7117#match-report

 

Coach’s comments – www.afl.com.au/video/1370711/full-post-match-r19-magpies?videoId=1370711&modal=true&type=video&publishFrom=1753002327001. A focus on learning lessons now, rather than later in the Season. Worth watching.

 

Goals scored:

Q1       3 (us) / 4 (them). Up and down, a bit. They held the lead late in the Quarter, held until early in Q2. Margin at QT – (negative) 6 Points;

Q2       5 / 3. More of the same, but better for us. Margin at HT + (positive) 7 Points;

Q3       1 / 1. Not much change. Margin at the Final break + 9 Points;

Q4       2 / 4. After we scored a pair of goals early in the Quarter giving us a 21 Point margin, they responded with four unanswered goals ultimately giving them the lead that we were unable to reverse; and

Total    11 / 12. Losing with a margin of 1 Point.

 

Statistics

Some numbers to seek to identify where there was a substantial difference and how this reflected the game:

 

Statistic	Us / Them			Comments
Disposals	350 / 352			Not hugely different. Handball – 158 / 163.
Hit Outs (HO)	49 / 39			A not-useful number decided by whichever ruck touches the ball first. A better assessment is ‘HO to advantage’, which I don’t have. And a much, much better measure is under Clearances, below. This number surprised me – I thought we were routinely beaten – the dominance wasn’t evident watching.
Clearances   Centre clearances: Stoppage clearances:	43 / 39     12 / 10   31 / 29			Our marginal dominance of Clearances is evident here. This should have been of concern. This is a much better measure than the HO and should have indicated a minor advantage to us in the next steps – Inside 50s and, ultimately, our scoring. Broadly speaking, this didn’t happen.
Inside 50s	63 / 40			The degree of our Clearance advantage, above, is not reflected in the Inside 50 numbers. This was a huge difference positively reflecting that we had far more entries into goal-scoring positions. See DE below regarding how we used them.
Disposal Efficiency (DE)	63.4% / 72.4%			Across the whole game. They were cleaner throughout.
DE Inside 50	36.5% / 52.5%			This difference here is huge. They have an overall huge advantage. Linking Inside 50s and DE inside 50 mean we got the ball into the 50 (broadly, into a scoring position) more frequently, but they used it far more effectively (scored). This represents the overlapping of the different statistics.
Goals scored	11 / 12			The result.
Player numbers with game DE of 80%	4 / 7			A bit different. Not sure why.
Free Kicks	24 / 20			This surprised me. Again, it was the offences not identified rather than those that were and consistent areas of concern – caught with ball, failure to dispose correctly, in the back in tackles, etc. There were a number of ‘late pushes after a mark’ not penalised; and some that were. Critically, it was the Frees awarded ‘at the death’ that were of most concern.
Contested Possession (CP)	151 / 131			Interesting – we dominated CP; they dominated UCP. It reflects different styles of play with us happy to work in the midst of players; for them with greater emphasis on getting out of the crush. I like it when the ball is locked in our attacking half, of course, as it seemed to be for extended periods, but without useful scoring.
Uncontested Possession (UCP)	191 / 215
Turnovers	62 / 75
Possession	41% / 41%			Watching, you’d pretty much identify periods when the ball was in our possession with much shorter periods when it raced the length of the field and scored. As such, I don’t understand this equivalence.
Marks   Marks inside 50 Contested marks	59 / 83   8 / 9 7 / 8			We were seriously out-marked particularly by their Backs. Marks inside 50 and Contested Marks’ broad equivalence indicates their Marks dominance was from the UCP.
Tackles   Tackles inside 50	86 / 65     35 / 9			This is an extraordinary advantage. It highlights our boys’ application. Importantly, the numbers Inside 50s, as above, contribute to scoring.
1%’ers	41 / 44			Spoils and defensive actions. Not too different.

 

Best:

The AFL website identifies Collingwood’s Best as:

• NickD;
• McCreery; and
• Cameron.

 

The Coaches’ Votes identified:

• NickD – 8 votes;
• Cameron – 4 votes; and
• McCreery – 1 vote.

 

For comparison the AFL website identified Voss, Serong, Clark and Ryan as Best with the Coaches scoring Voss – 9 votes, Serong – 6 and Clark – 2. My personal view is that a couple of others were pretty significant – Bolton and Jackson.

 

In addition to those identified for us, above, I’d suggest adding Crisp (457mGained, 23 Disposals @ 43,5% DE, 5 Tackles, 6 Clearances, 11 Contested Possessions and 7 Inside 50s) and JoshD (438mG, 25D @ 56.0% DE, 1 T, 2 Cl, 9 CP and 5 I50). Further, both Long and Sidey had good days at the office.

 

Your thoughts?

 

Crowd: 62,198. Can only imagine the Pies’ supporter dominance of numbers?

 

Result: This was an awful game to watch:

• I never quite expected we’d Lose until the last minute – actually when Billy got ready for his kick, I was convinced that, of course, they’d do it again. In fact the slowly increasing margin to early in Q4 to 21 Points filled me with reasonable confidence. Then we let them score four, unanswered goals. And Lost.
• I thought their ball-handling was cleaner than ours.
• The speed with which they were able, against the flow of the game, use the corridor to achieve quick, accurate passes resulting in scores was amazing. Need to look at how to halt this.
• Our substantial dominance in Inside 50 numbers should be seen as a substantially greater number of times we were in a position to score. Countering this is their huge dominance in effectiveness of the entries. This is where the statistics cancel each other out.
• We badly need to put together a ‘Kick-in’ plan, both as a negative to stop their kick-ins and as a positive to facilitate ours. The kick-in following the scoring of a Behind is a cheap way of transferring ball-possession; the most critical part of using the ball.
• NickD’s ability to shift between different positions seemed to work well, but see comments, below, regarding a rest.
• High kicks into the 50 to packs is not the best avenue to the Forwards (or out of our Backline) even with Cox or Cameron as a target. Better solutions are lower kicks to targets. The speed of high kicks is also allowing defenders to intercept or, at the least disrupt, the passage of the ball. Work on kicking harder and lower.
• This game was also against opponents who were just as committed as our team usually is. We need to be able to match this.  A further challenge is to work out a plan to better counter this. The best example is to determine how we allowed them to score four unanswered goals in Q4.

 

In summary, we Lost because we lost control of the game in Q4. As Coach McRae said, it is better to learn now than later in the Season. We’ll see over the next few weeks whether he has been able to achieve that.

 

Round 20

Sunday, 27^th July – Richmond versus Collingwood at the MCG; bounce at 2.10pm.

 

This game is between 1^st place with 14 Wins and 4 Losses with a 133.7% percentage, us, on the Ladder and them in 16^th place with 5 Wins and 13 Losses with a 68.5% percentage. That said, we’ve Lost our last two games, admittedly by 6 Points and 1 Point respectively, but Richmond have Won their most recent two games by 49 Points against the Eagles (no surprise there) and Essendon by 9 Points, most recently.

 

Betting: As at 21 July – $1.06 (Pies’ Win) / $9.30 (Tigers’ Win) which changed from the 16 July figures of $1.05 / $10.50. We are Favourites, obviously as a consequence of our performance during the entire Season, not just the last two games, but Richmond are playing good football and the threat should not be ignored.

 

Them

Richmond finished 18^th last year with 2 Wins and 21 Losses and a 63.7% percentage. They have improved this year with Wins against Carlton by 13 Points (started the season well in R1), the GC in R6 by 11, the WCE in R9 by 2, Essendon in R18 by 9 and the Eagles, again, in R19 by 49 Points. In addition to these Wins, they have had close Losses against North by 4 Points in R10 and GWS in R12 by 3.  Including these extra, their place in the Ladder could have been significantly improved.

 

Players to watch:

• Hopper – Rover;
• Campbell – CHF;
• Vlastuin – CHB / HB / BP;
• Nankervis – Ruck;
• Taranto – RR. He has picked up recognition in the Coaches’ assessment of Best, including the maximum 10 points in Round 18 against Essendon, and the same against the Eagles last week; May warrant a tag job?
• Trainor – HB / CHB.

 

This collection from their Best listings is indicative of a focus on their Midfield plus some key positions. So, win the Midfield battle and unlike last week against Freo, take control of the corridor.

 

Us:

 

Context?    We are now only half a game clear at the top of the Ladder. With the success of the Coach’s pursuit of participation in the Finals, we need to start getting ready for those, which are, as stated previously, a very different game.

 

Changes?  Watched a very interesting TV discussion this morning between a couple of commentators I respect, suggesting that NickD, looking a bit slow and jaded and facing action every week, should be rested, plus maybe Elliott too. The source – Heard with Cornes’ agreement.

 

• Outs: NickD, Elliott and Perryman, each managed, plus Sullivan and Allan.

• Ins: De Mattia, Grey, Frampton, Mitchell and Hill.

• Game Plan. As per the above, McCreery had a great return game. It could be considered pushing him into the Back 6 to add a little ‘grunt’ increasing the Back 6 to 7 rather than pushing one of the current ones out.

 

Your thoughts?

 

Game Plan – No changes of substance from past weeks. A couple of points, as usual:

• Application. Nothing is more important. Well demonstrated in our last few games. And Attitude is King.

• Taggers. Tagging roles might be useful, including an occasional hard lock-down role on their Forwards / Midfield? And protecting our players? That should also be key.

• Midfield Management. Pendles guidance / on-field coaching to the collective Midfield – note the game adjustment in the GC game.

• Passing. Accuracy of passes by foot and hand critical – see comments above regarding Freo’s clean ball handling. Critical.

• Drive. Drive out of the Backline is a key part of our game plan. Be prepared to cross the field, even to kick backwards to change the direction. Kick-ins are a continuing issue – we need to have a plan that everyone knows.

• Kicking for Goal. This is critical. Ball delivery needs to be to the best goal-kicking position. Importantly, scoring a Behind is a waste – for I Point you hand over ball-possession to the opposition. It’s not worth it – get the ball into a better position.

• Tackles. A major success (see last week’s numbers) but still some opponents are spinning out of tackles. Love the multiple tacklers.

 

Our Aim? Be happy.

 

Summary? Again, this is our game to Win by a huge margin when we decide that and implement our Game plan throughout the four full Quarters. We are giving respect to teams that do not deserve it and we need to scare the rest of the competition as we head towards the Finals.

 

Winning Selection. Collingwood to Win by 39 Points. BOG – JoshD with 32 touches, including 11 Clearances. Goal kickers include McStay – 4.

 

TV: FTA off, again. Go to Kayo or Fox Footy; Binge missing from this one.

 

Weather: Light rain on the weekend, so expect it to be wet and slippery. Get the boots with stops out – limit the slip sliding.

 

Ground Reports? Reports please (after or before)? I’d especially like to hear from the armchair warriors watching from afar?

 

Other:

• AFLW – Pencil the start date in – Thursday, 14 August, including getting to the competition’s first game: Carlton versus Collingwood at Ikon Park; bounce at 7.15pm. The draw? Go to www.afl.com.au/fixture?Competition=3&Season=84&Round=1301.

• VFL – Last game we beat Geelong by 15 Points. Go towww.afl.com.au/vfl/matches/7423to see some detail, particularly the Match Timeline. Next on Saturday, 26^th July is against Frankston (7^th on the Ladder) at the Kinetic Stadium in Frankston; bounce at 7.10pm. In this competition, counting this next game, there are four more H&A games. The Top 10 on the Ladder make the Finals. We are currently placed 5^th on the Ladder so need to maintain the pressure. As I explained last week, the VFL team continuing to play in parallel with our Finals is critical because it provides an avenue for previously injured players to work up game-time before being thrown into the AFL competition. Without that capacity, there is an inherent risk in the selection process. Good luck, boys.

• VFLW team – Another fantastic Win by the Ladies also over Geelong by 35 Points. Well done. Go to www.afl.com.au/vflw/matches/7537to see some match detail; check the Match Timeline, particularly their last five, unanswered, goals. Next on Saturday, 2^nd August is against Williamstown (sitting 5^th on the Ladder) at DSV Stadium; bounce at 10.05am. This game is the competitions last H&A game. Remember the Top 6 go into the Finals. Our team is currently placed 2^nd on the Ladder so are assured of making the Finals. Good luck.

• US AFL Combine – 20 – 22 June at Dallas, USA. Any outcomes seen?  I have heard nothing. Any rumours?
• Do you favour the return of a State of Origin series? Why?
• Anything else, everyone else?

 

Next:

• Round 21. Saturday, 2^nd August Collingwood versus Brisbane at the MCG; bounce at 7.35pm. Note the recent advice regarding ticketing – It is now ‘fully ticketed’ – GA members need to upgrade seats to reserved seats

 

 

This is our year. Always believe; never, ever give up! Go Pies.

 

Cam

 

 

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