Round 12 – Western Bulldogs v Collingwood: Fair to Middling – Floreat Pica Society match report

 

 

 

Round 12
Western Bulldogs v Collingwood
Saturday 30 May
Marvel Stadium, Melbourne

 

There is a particular kind of mid-season malaise that descends on clubs who are good enough to win most of the games they lose, yet not quite good enough to lose fewer of them. Collingwood, sitting precisely mid-table at precisely the midpoint of the season, have contracted it badly. Tonight’s opponents, the Western Bulldogs, are similarly afflicted. In another era, this would be an eight-point, everything-on-the-line, season-defining clash. In the age of the Wildcard Finals Week, however, it is merely another game between two middling clubs who will have plenty of other opportunities to resolve their identity crises before September.

 

And yet — as the evening would prove — nobody told this to the players.

 

 

First quarter

 

Marcus Bontempelli wins two centre clearances inside the opening minute, which is simultaneously thrilling and deflating — thrilling because of the elegance, deflating because you know the Pies are not going to match it all night. Aaron Naughton, the Vitas Gerulaitis of the competition (always threatening, occasionally devastating, never quite the champion), marks strongly against Billy Frampton — Collingwood’s best defender all year — and punishes him with only a point. Very Vitas.

 

Bruzza, Pendlebury and De’Goey apply some senior calm to settle the opening storm, and the game briefly resembles somewhat of a senior’s poker night that could go well into the night.

 

Tim Membrey marks in the Jamie Elliott pocket — as if to remind us of his untimely and indefinite absence — and, as if honouring the tribute, sprays it. The ghost of Elliott sighs.

 

The Bulldogs’ uncontested game begins to hum. Frampton is outmarked for a second time and the Bulldogs’ first goal arrives with a sense of inevitability. Nick Daicos, apparently benched for the opening ten minutes as either a tactical masterstroke or a genuine coaching blunder, enters the arena and performs his customary dance. This creates sufficient disorder for De’Goey to shake loose and kick a goal that looks improvised but probably wasn’t.

 

The chess match continues — both teams playing to their strengths, both teams waiting for the opponent to flinch first. The Bulldogs flinch less and capitalise on a turnover, with the enigmatic Artie Jones reaping the benefit. The Pies’ backline is already resembling a marquee in a stiff breeze. Then — with the timing of a man who has read the script and decided to ignore it — Daicos snaps from a forward stoppage. Membrey marks again from a midfield turnover and suddenly, we have kicked two goals in two minutes. Quarter time: we are within a goal, having earned approximately none of it.

 

Bulldogs 4.4.28 Pies 3.3.21

 

 

Second quarter

 

It begins exactly as the first did: a Bont clearance. Some teams have a motif. The Bulldogs have Bont.

 

Collingwood showing either touching loyalty or catastrophic short-term memory, gift Adam Treloar the exact 25-metres he can kick a ball and form a guard of honour as it lurches its way to goal. Are we still paying him?

 

The Pies’ backline is now less a defensive structure and more a loosely affiliated group of individuals standing near each other. Parker and Pendlebury are essentially acting as load-bearing walls holding up a condemned building. Howe, Houston and the elder Daicos drift through the contest like men who have somewhere more pressing to be. Whether Sidebottom is playing remains a matter of ongoing philosophical inquiry.

 

At this point, I pour myself a whisky. I tell myself it is to celebrate the next goal. This is not true.

 

While the ice steeps into the liquid gold, the Bulldogs dominate proceedings in a way that suggests they have read the notes on our defence more carefully than we have. Then De’Goey — who is, let it be said, having his best season in terms of availability and consistency since arriving at the club — ignores a shorter, safer option (as De’Goey often ignores shorter, safer options) and bombs a 50-metre lace-out pass to Lachie Schultz, standing directly in front, 30 metres out. Schultz converts. I could have kicked that. I choose not to mention the whisky.

 

Half time. We are down by three goals. It feels like more. The whisky is helping.

 

Bulldogs 7.7.49 Pies 4.8.32

 

 

Third quarter

 

The Dogs strike first, naturally, but then Shooter — bless him — kicks an important goal, and the crowd briefly remembers what hope feels like.

 

Riding the momentum, Nick Daicos earns a precious centre bounce clearance, and McStay — yes, McStay, he is actually playing — receives a free kick in front and converts in his laconic way. Somehow, through no logical process that can be reconstructed, we are within two goals.

 

Ed Richards hits the post and I begin to think it might be our night. The Bulldogs have wobbled before. A bit like us. A lot like us. Craig Macrae often talks about ‘getting to work’ and some of our younger players start to reflect this tutelage. Will Parker rebounding off half-back, ‘Angry’ Anderson getting involved in progressive forward thrusts, and Roan Steele kicking what seems to be his weekly running goal. We look to have reasserted ourselves, but the Dogs do the same — kicking a couple in a row, settling into the kind of football that makes them look like a finals team and us looking like a team that might be watching on during the finals.

 

The whisky has now fully kicked in. I begin to wonder, genuinely and with a kind of melancholy clarity, how we are still in this game. I also know, with equal clarity, that we are going to lose. We don’t have the cattle. We have some of the cattle. But not all of the cattle.

 

Then: an Anderson bomb. This kid has the tools to match the rug. We are somehow still in this. God, I love whisky.

 

Bulldogs 11.10.76 Pies 8.10.58

 

 

Final quarter

 

McCreery launches one of his trademark, yet way too infrequent, bombs. Pendlebury — who in game 434, and running on institutional memory and competitive fury alone — shuffles beautifully and sets up another scoring opportunity. Lipinski goals from a piece of Daicos magic. The game is alive, crackling, and deeply unfair to anyone who had written it off at half time.

 

Shooter takes a great mark. Misses. Shooter giveth; Shooter taketh away.

 

Ed Richards finds yet another hole in our defence which is simply under-manned. Well, under-sized. Bruzza, Quaynor and Howe are your classic Collingwood 6-footers. Skilled, determined and too bloody short.

 

Goal for goal. The game hangs in the balance, swaying on the faintest breeze…if the roof was open. Membrey and the increasingly impressive Anderson bring us to the wire. This is, improbably, happening. We find ourselves in a one-kick finish — a domain that once felt like home during our march to the premiership, but which now carries the faint, nagging feeling of a charmed run slowly running out of charm. We are a team that can play better than our season suggests but are still a long way from contending.

 

The Bulldogs hold on.

 

Bulldogs 14.12.97 Pies 13.15 93

 

Votes:

 

3. Jordan DeGoey – At the beginning of the year, in a moment of either optimism or ritual self-harm, I asked the football gods to grant Jordy a clean bill of health for the season. They have, as ever, responded with their customary blend of partial generosity and dark humour. De’Goey has never managed to play every game in a season — not once, not even close — and this year he has already missed one, which means the streak, such as it is, remains intact. And yet, he is on pace for the most consistent season of his career, which for Jordan De’Goey is both a triumph and a low bar, and which we should celebrate accordingly. He is a vital, irreplaceable cog in our spluttering machine — the kind of player who, when available and engaged, makes the whole thing look like it might actually work. Tonight he was both. Fingers crossed the body holds. It won’t, entirely, but fingers crossed nonetheless.

 

2. Scott Pendlebury – What can you say? Honestly — what can you say that hasn’t been said, that doesn’t risk tipping into hagiography, that adequately captures what it means to watch this man operate deep into his thirties in a sport that has spent a decade trying to make him obsolete? Tonight he was load-bearing. Tonight, with the backline dissolving around him, Pendlebury shuffled and probed and found angles that the available geometry didn’t seem to permit. He is the architectural feature that holds the roof up. You don’t notice it until you contemplate its absence. What can you say? Probably just: still him. Still, somehow, him.

 

1. Nick Daicos – Led them a merry dance again, doing things that only Nick can do — which is to say, things that look improvised but almost certainly aren’t, things that seem to bend the physics of the contest without quite breaking them, things that make you briefly forget we lost by four points after kicking fifteen behinds. One vote feels stingy. It is also simply a function of the others being, tonight, a little more consistently excellent across four quarters rather than intermittently transcendent. Nick’s time will come. It usually does.

 

 

still
finishing my sentences
whisky…I mean Daicos

 

 

WESTERN BULLDOGS             4.4    7.7    11.10   14.13 (97)
COLLINGWOOD                            3.3    4.8    8.10   13.15 (93)

 

GOALS
Western Bulldogs: Lewis 3, McNeil 2, English 2, Richards 2, Jones, West, Treloar, Bontempelli, Naughton
Collingwood: Membrey 3, Schultz 2, Anderson 2, De Goey, N.Daicos, McStay, Steele, McCreery, Lipinski

 

BEST
Western Bulldogs: Bontempelli, Jones, English, Sanders, Lobb, Richards
Collingwood: N.Daicos, Pendlebury, De Goey, Lipinski, Schultz

 

INJURIES
Western Bulldogs: Nil
Collingwood: McStay (cut eyelid)

 

Crowd: 43,430 at Marvel Stadium

 

More Round 12 match reports HERE.

 

– Haiku Bob

 

More from Haiku Bob Here.

 

 

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