Round 7 – Collingwood v Gold Coast: Corridor (Floreat Pica Society)

 

 

Collingwood v Gold Coast

1:10pm, Sunday May 1

MCG

 

by Steve Fahey

 

 

Corridor (n)

1A: a passageway (as in a hotel or office building) into which compartments or rooms open

B: a place or position in which especially political power is wielded through discussion and deal-making

2: a usually narrow passageway or route: such as

A: a narrow strip of land through foreign-held territory

B: a restricted lane for air traffic

C: a land path used by migrating animals

 

 

 

Pre-game ramblings

As Dave did in his excellent Anzac Day match report, I often include some pre-match thoughts (mine are often more ramblings, as you will learn) in my match reports and I thought I would do something different this time by actually sending them around before the match.

 

This will be the 12th clash between the Pies and the Suns. As well as having attended all the Melbourne-based games, I’ve been fortunate to attend a couple of the games at Carrara, the very first one in 2011, which was a carnival atmosphere, and then the Clinton Young game in 2014.

 

2022 is notable in that it will be the first time that we have played the Suns twice in one season. This really does highlight that the AFL has a fixture rather than a draw, and some of the misguided and often repeated statements about Collingwood always getting an easy draw appear to ignore circumstances such as this, the Suns having never played finals, and it taking us 12 years and having to plummet to a 17th-placed finish in 2021 to get them twice in a season.

 

While the Pies start to 2022 has been mostly positive, we have already experienced some of the ups and downs that can be expected with a youngish side and a new coaching panel. One of the most impressive aspects of our form to date has been that we go into this game being the fifth highest scoring team in the competition, and higher scorers than the top two teams. This has been an impressive turnaround from being the 16th highest (or third lowest) scoring team during 2021 and certainly has made us a lot more attractive to watch. The big question ahead of this game was whether we could continue both our quite good form and our scoring record, especially with the absence of Elliot and Kruger, and of course also without Grundy for an extended period.

 

Speaking of Grundy, when I heard the bad news about his injury, I thought that we would just have to borrow, beg or steal a ruck. It turns out that we went for the Begg option, and for the first time in the club’s history, we have a team that features Begg and Steele (acknowledgment to Paul Harkin who used a variation of this gag in his inimitable Bye round report in 2021). There was a kid from the Geelong Falcons who nominated for the draft last year, but was not selected, called Oscar Barrow. I’m big on the idea of drafting him mid-season so we can call out the team and list Begg, Steele and Barrow!

 

The other question in my head before the game is, what are we going to do about Touk Miller? He absolutely destroyed us in 2021, earning three Brownlow votes on his way to a well-deserved All-Australian selection. Perhaps the inclusion of Tyler Brown may suggest a run-with role – while we haven’t used run-withs on mids all year (at least that I’ve noticed, and we certainly didn’t do so on Parish last week), I think it’s important that you can have someone who can do so, and it may be a way for Tyler Brown to try to consolidate a spot. It won’t have gone unnoticed to the coaching staff that the Giants played a hard tag on Miller in round three and he had an ordinary game by his standards.

 

 

Pre-match at the ‘G

You really couldn’t have a bigger contrast in the home and away season to go from the charged pre-game atmosphere of the now historical ANZAC Day clash to a 1:10 Sunday start against the Suns. It was a subdued atmosphere and a slowly building smallish mostly one-sided crowd.

 

 

The match

The first half was a good old-fashioned shoot-out, with nineteen goals and goals coming in bursts. The Suns kicked the first two, then we kicked the next seven, then they kicked four then we kicked four then they kicked two. Why/how did it happen that way ? Both times were very aggressive in using the corridor and there was a certain amount of Russian Roulette in mids pushing forward hard from clearances or when a contest was won, with limited defensive accountability. Consequently both defences were often outnumbered with the ball coming in quickly.

 

Both teams tended to score when they won clearances and the Suns dominated the centre clearances in the first half. We put together many impressive chains of possession, including our first goal, which started from a very clever handball from Pendles in the back half opening up the corridor and we were good enough to take the ball the length of the field before JDG put us on the scoreboard. Lipinski and Josh Daicos were in everything, Darcy Cameron kicked a couple and the individual highlight of the quarter was a brilliant assist from McCreery to Mihocek who soccered it through on the goal line. We led by 26 points at the first break and this was the decisive period of the game.

 

While we won the second quarter, we were under pressure for large parts of it, as Witts continued to dominate the hit-outs and Miller, Rowell and Anderson were all prominent for the Suns. At times our backs zoning off were quite easily picked apart by their mids streaming forward and we looked very vulnerable at times, with Casboult marking everything. While he kicked well for two and a half quarters, we were fortunate that he reverted to form after that, ending up with 4.4. Chol was also excellent for them in the second half and we looked both a bit undersized without Roughead. Two big individual highlights in the second quarter were Ginnivan’s dancing and candy-selling goal of the year contender and Madgen bombing one from 55 metres plus.

 

We conceded the first goal of all four quarters and Casboult and Chol looked like bringing the Suns back into it in the third quarter before, following the pattern of the first half, we steadied with goals from Crisp, Josh Daicos and Ginnivan, who really knows where the goals are, to give us a significant enough buffer, with the last quarter producing lots of errors from tired players on both teams.

 

Overall, it was a solid win in a game which we were expected to win, but sometimes have not done so in recent times (refer the Eagles game a few weeks ago and the Suns game last year). We once again scored heavily, reaching 100 points by three quarter time and now averaging 95 points for each game compared with 71 points in 2021. That’s an extra goal per quarter, and while we are also being more heavily scored against, when you can score, you can win games, and the bonus is that we are SO much more fun to watch than we were in the last couple of years of Bucks’ time.

 

Mihocek and Ginnivan have shared 16 goals in the past two games and it was very encouraging to see Henry kick seven in the twos. We have some scoring power, dependent on fast ball movement given our paucity of big-marking forwards available. Our mids are hardworking without being brilliant and, while we are being more heavily scored against as a result of the new game plan, we also have much greater capacity to initiate scoring from defence through a combination of the game plan and some better ball users back there, notably Pendles, IQ and Nick Daicos when he plays back. We do often look vulnerable when we turn the ball over (Exhibit A the last quarter of the Cats game, Exhibit B the second quarter of the Lions game,) and it will be interesting to see how we fare against some of the better sides in the coming weeks.

 

Importantly, there were no apparent injuries incurred in this game. We are struggling for depth and our bottom few are likely to be exposed by the better teams.

 

Begg was promising in his first game. He is skinny and will need a couple of pre-seasons to bulk up for when he comes up against giants like Witts and Gawn, but has a good leap, competed well and has decent skills, including being a good long kick. Steele was solid, especially in the first half and I didn’t notice Borrow (or Barrow) at all!

 

Overall I am delighted that we are 4-3 and playing attacking and bold footy. The new coaching panel gets a big tick from me at this stage.

 

I will leave the less positive aspects to Moods in his DR report.

 

 

Answers to my pre-match questions

Could we continue both our quite good form and our scoring record ? A definitive YES and YES – ten goalkickers including some unlikely names, Madgen and both Brown brothers.

 

What are we going to do about Touk Miller ? Not much, he may well have again picked up three Brownlow votes with 36 possessions, 10 clearances and two goals, he’s in the best half-dozen mids in the comp in my opinion.

 

 

The votes

I thought there were four players worthy of sharing the votes, but as we strongly encourage a 3-2-1 format for the Horsburgh, the votes for the prestigious 2022 Horsburgh Medal are:

 

(3) Crisp – another excellent hard-running game in which he won plenty of ball, used the ball quite well, yet again topped our metres gained and kicked a rare set shot goal.

 

(2) Mihocek – such an admirable player, enormous work rate, smart, kicked well for three quarters and is absolutely critical to our forward structure

 

(1) Lipinski – a fantastic first half, especially the first quarter which was the defining period in this game and then spent time forward which was interesting. Had a game-high 12 score involvements and has been an excellent pick up.

 

 

Honourable mentions to Josh Daicos (whom I thought was very good, especially his ball use going forward), Pendles, Adams and Darcy Cameron (mainly for the first half).

 

The Danny Stanley Medal goes to the indefatigable Jack Crisp.

 

Onto a big game against Richmond next week, with Dusty likely to return, which will probably bring in an extra 10,000 people.

 

GO PIES!

Floreat Pica

 

 

 

COLLINGWOOD            7.3       11.5       15.10     17.13 (115)
GOLD COAST                   3.1       8.2        11.3       14.6 (90)

 

GOALS  
Collingwood: Mihocek 4, Ginnivan 3, Cameron, J.Daicos 2, C.Brown, T.Brown, Crisp, De Goey, Madgen, McCreery
Gold Coast: Casboult 4, Chol 3, Ainsworth, Holman, Miller 2, Rosas

 

BEST  
Collingwood: J.Daicos, Mihocek, Lipinski, Crisp, Pendlebury, N.Daicos
Gold Coast: Miller, Anderson, Casboult, Ainsworth, Rowell, Chol

 

 

 

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