Cam Hooke’s Collingwood Life 2025: Round 2 Review / Round 3 Bye

 

 

Greetings, True Believers. A better start than last year?

 

Firstly, a welcome. Abbey, welcome. Your dad, a stalwart member of our ‘collective’, described, you “as large a Collingwood nut as her father”. Great praise, indeed. This is just a bit of fun amongst the broader ‘Pies’ supporter family’ (with a couple of additions). Welcome, and we look forward to hearing from you.

 

Others? Up to 84. Let’s hit 100 by season’s end?

 

A shorter email today looking at our R2 Win. I’ll send out a prompt next week following R3 performances for our R4 game against the olde enemy. Interesting, most of us consider Carlton to be our principal opponent. I’m a bit exceptional because every one of my siblings is a ‘died in the wool’ Geelong fan, so I place Wins over Geelong as my preferred outcome. Doesn’t help that I spent eight years at boarding school in Geelong and, for our slightly older members, David Clarke was a year or so ahead of me at school – a great footballer.

 

Round 2

 

Collingwood 10.16.76 defeated Footscray (yes, they went to the F name in recognition of their 100^th anniversary) 10.10.70.

 

Match Report: www.afl.com.au/afl/matches/6979#match-report. 

 

Coach’s Comments: www.afl.com.au/video/1283634/mcrae-post-match-r2-i-thought-mason-came-in-and-played-a-role-for-us?videoId=1283634&modal=true&type=video&publishFrom=1742561370001. Highly complementary to Footscray, noting the absences of a number of their key players, but acknowledging both sides’ application. Of course, it’s easier to be humble after a Win.

 

 

Goals’ scored:

 

Q1: 2 (us) / 3 (them). They bounced out to a 3 goals to nil lead by the middle of the Quarter. Then we largely recovered – it’s worth noting that we scored four unanswered goals from mid Q1 into Q2. Our deficit at the first change (in the middle of this) – one straight kick;

Q2: 3 / 3. We won this Quarter, by a single Point. Deficit at HT – 5 Points;

Q3: 3 / 1. Says it all, actually. We dominated. Lead at the final change – 2 kicks – 8 Points;

Q4: 2 / 3. Not much in it. Good desperation by both sides. The end? We Won by 6 Points. That means they Won Q4, but not by much; and

Total: 10 / 10. Margin – 4 Points.

 

 

Game Statistics

 

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

 

Statistic	Numbers (us / them)	Comments
Hit Outs (HO)	38 / 37	A pretty irrelevant number, scored on the basis of who touches the ball first; doesn’t matter where it goes, that is ‘HO to advantage’, better assessed as Clearances. Close to equal.
Clearances	36 / 35	Centre clearances –  7 / 14; and Stoppage clearances – 29 / 21. To make any sense, the HO differential should be reflected in the Clearances. Unfortunately we have close HO numbers, so you’d expect the close numbers, as here. These numbers match my perception of the game – both sides worked hard, though they took the advantage out of the Centre; we were better at the stoppages, particularly keeping the ball in our 50. They scored ‘suddenly’ in a rapid flow direct towards their goal – we were occasionally caught napping.
Inside 50s	50 / 43	The next step in the heading to Goal, should broadly reflecting the Clearances. The gap here does not reflect the Clearance equivalence. This is, with Disposal Efficiency (see next), a match winning difference.
Disposal Efficiency (DE)	72.3% / 73.3%	Across the whole game – pretty close.
DE Inside 50	54.0% / 44.2%	This, with Inside 50s numbers, is the ‘game winner’. Clearly with anearly 10% advantage in both statistics, our scoring success should reflect this. Actually, we missed quite a lot of relatively straight-forward scoring opportunities. Footscray’s numbers were frequently a consequence of our ‘mistakes’, not their success. We could have Won by a further five goals without changing the game statistics here.
Player numbers with DE > 80%	8 / 6	Linked with DE throughout the game. The spread of efficient players contributed.
Free Kicks	33 / 14	When their Darcy got through with ‘cuddling’ our Darcy for their first Free and first Goal, I was prepared to stop swearing at the TV and watch the game. Unfortunately, the inconsistencies remained, particularly relating to incorrect disposal / caught with the ball / etc . I thought the umpiring, however, was improved. I have no idea where these numbers came from. Certainly, there was no implication of favoritism during the game.
Contested Possession (CP)	140 / 129	Combined, the difference in the two aspects reflects the team style of play. Each team sought to dominate the game, holding onto the ball. There were substantial periods when the ball was locked in our attacking half.
Uncontested Possession (UCP)	215 / 208
Turn-overs (TO)	57 / 65	One they Won, to little effect. I think the willingness to take risks is part of this,
Marks	77 / 69	Not too different.
Marks inside 50	12 / 11	Critical re goal-scoring.
Tackles	64 / 54	Not too different. Our team was here to play. The multiple tacklers was impressive.
Tackles inside 50	12 / 9	Critical re goal-scoring.
Goals	10 10
1%’ers	48 / 38	Spoils and defensive actions. I haven’t gone back to add up the numbers, but this difference is, again, reflecting their domination of effort.

 

Crowd: 78,027.

 

Best:

 

The AFL website identifies Collingwood’s Best as:

 

• NickD
• Pendles,
• Schultz’
• Cameron,
• Lipinski, and
• Howe.

 

I would be tempted to add  a couple – Sidey – 22 Disposals @ 63.6% DE, 6 Clearances and 366 mG. You couldn’t miss him; he seemed to be everywhere, and what a great ‘3-minutes to go’ winning goal. And JoshD. He was also pretty prolific – 25 D @ 84%, 4 Marks, 2 Tackles, 6 CP and 438 mG. A productive day at the office for both of them. Further – Darcy Moore had a much improved game.

 

One further inclusion, principally based on his R1 game that I was largely unaware of, though he did make the Best list but no Coaches’ votes – add Ned Long. Go to www.sen.com.au/news/2025/03/20/how-unsung-magpie-helped-daicos-back-to-damaging-best. This explains how shifting ‘ball-winning Nick’ to ‘ball-using Nick’ was able to be achieved through Ned Long’s influence – “grunt work in and under”. His figures in R1 were telling – 14 CP and five Clearances. Nick’s numbers – 6 CP and 18 UCP. His numbers for the R2 game are okay – 13 Disposals @ 53.8%, 9 tackles and 198 mG. This article is worth reading.

Your thoughts? Much better commitment throughout all four Quarters.

 

Some Observations?

 

This game gave ‘the feeling’ of always being ours, even when we were down. The caution here, of course, is that we could have Lost with a single kick. I much prefer the PA type result than placing us, quiet supporters, under pressure (again and again).

 

Unlike the week before, this was not an “easy watch”. Footscray, playing in front of their largest crowd ever, and in front of a few legends of the game, were here to compete. And they did for the whole game.

 

The tackling was ferocious, with much by multiple tacklers. Further there was great attention to ground balls, coming out of packs or tackles. The blunting of attacks into their Forward line and our drive out of our Backline was terrific. Additionally, the varied delivery into our Forward line provided the basis for occasionally outstanding kicking efficiency; unfortunately a few routine conversions were missed (as did they, of course). And the Midfield? They worked both directions and contributed hugely. Note their domination of Midfield clearances; an area we need to address. We did well keeping the ball in our attacking zone for extended periods. However, we need to be cautious allowing an opposition to drive straight out of the Centre heading direct to goal. This happened a number of times.

 

Lobb’s punch top Cox’ jaw? Nothing? Get real. Well done, McCreery, expressing his displeasure to him.

 

Really good linked ball passages out of the Backline through to scoring. Links into Forwards shooting for goal sometimes let us down.

 

It was a game to enjoy and feel part of. My congratulations to those who were there, linked with substantial envy. Enjoy the break. No trips to Bali.

 

Next:

 

• Round 3

 

• Bye

 

• Round 4

 

Ø  Thursday, 3 April – Collingwood versus Carlton at the MCG; bounce at 7.30pm.

 

Ø  More on this next week after Round 3.

 

Ground Reports? Now I know some of you were at last weekend’s game, or watched it at home on TV.  Reports please? I’d especially like to hear from the armchair warriors watching from afar?  More please.

 

Other:

 

• VFL – Collingwood 13.6.84 defeated Sydney 8.11.59. Go to www.collingwoodfc.com.au/news/1737324/pies-kick-off-vfl-season-with-win. Best: Frampton, Dean, Allan, Mason, Grey, Iliro and Smit. Key point: Collingwood’s greater accuracy (13.6) compared with Sydney’s (8.11) dominated a deficiency of 13 Inside 50s across the game, noting the equal scoring shot numbers. Next: Bye – Round 2. Round 3 clash on Sunday 6 April against Coburg at Piranha Park, Coburg; bounce at 1.05pm.  
• Anything else, people?

 

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

 

Cam

 

 

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